


Harry Potter and the Language of Serpents

by Wyste



Series: The Problem Universe [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apprenticeship, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical past child abuse, Domestic Fluff, Family, Fix-It, Gen, Humor, Kid Fic, Letters, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PTSD, Parent Severus Snape, Parseltongue, Post-Hogwarts, Potions, Press and Tabloids, Protective Severus Snape, Secret Identity, The Deathly Hallows, Trust Issues, Wizarding Politics, a lot of canon divergence at this point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2018-11-14 16:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 30,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11211711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wyste/pseuds/Wyste
Summary: Harry Potter, recent vanquisher of the Dark Lord and potions apprentice to one Severus Snape, is absolutely certain he is going to have a peaceful year learning the secrets of the most elegant magical art. The mysterious baby girl Snape declared his daughter after the Battle of Hogwarts can't possibly cause any trouble, surely? She's a baby. Babies are easy.





	1. With Friends Like These...

In every universe, Harry Potter’s life could be described as somewhat unusual. For instance, most people had never died. Nor had most people had the sheer, brutal stubbornness to pursue a potions apprenticeship on top of fighting a war, graduating from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and making a great many friends and enemies along the way.

Which was a long way to say that Harry’s seventeenth year had been very long indeed, and he was very much looking forward to his eighteenth being entirely peaceful.

“It was Hagrid who carried you off to your awful muggle relatives, wasn’t it?” asked Draco Malfoy from the other side of the breakfast table at Number 12 Grimmauld Place. “So it’s most likely he who dropped you on your head and made you so daft.”

“Why are you even _here_?” Harry asked, stabbing his eggs fiercely with a fork. “Sirius, why is he here? This is my last day before I go off to do apprentice things. I thought we were going to do something _fun_.”

“I’m having fun,” Sirius said, sipping tea and looking entirely too satisfied. “I invited my not-entirely-awful cousin over to see you off, because you still aren’t forgiven for New Year’s.”

Harry had walked to his death on New Year’s, if not calmly, at least without visible hysterics. Sirius had yet to forgive him for this, not that Harry could entirely argue the point.

“You really must do something about that rude streak, Harry. Once you stop hiding behind the Fidelius on this place you’re going to have to deal with reporters, you know,” Draco said with perfect, pristine calm that made Harry’s fists itch.

“You said I’d been dropped on my head as a baby!”

“Harry, _you_ said you’d have a peaceful, restful year. Have you ever had a peaceful, restful year in your life?”

“We could have invited Ron,” Harry moaned. “Or Hermione. Or _anyone but him_.”

“They have real jobs,” Sirius said, not looking up from his copy of the Daily Prophet. “Draco, on the other hand, is an unemployed layabout, and thus can come to breakfast whenever he pleases.”

“I am _independently wealthy_ ,” Draco hissed.

Draco’s animagus form, on a related note, was a cat. A small, fluffy white cat. It was cute.

“Currently using that independent wealth to be an unemployed layabout. I assume your father is proud?”

“Very,” Draco sniffed.

“Well, this is great,” Harry said hastily, “But I think I’ll just leave for my apprenticeship a little early, thanks for breakfast, Sirius.”

Harry stood.

“Sit,” said Sirius, still not looking up.

Harry sat.

“Right. I’ll start.” Sirius folded the paper (Harry caught a glimpse of the headline WHERE IS HARRY POTTER) and put it down next to his plate. “Severus Snape is an evil, petty, spiteful little git.”

“Sirius-“

“I’m not done. For some reason, you like him. I still don’t understand that. It doesn’t mean he’s stopped being an evil, petty, spiteful little git. You’re about to start trying to work for him, and live with him, and learn from him all through the day and night. This is actually one of your better decisions this year. Still, when he’s awful, and he will be, you remember that I am here, and you can call me on the mirror, and I will hex him into next week until he remembers there are consequences to treating you like dirt. Am I clear?”

“Sirius, no.”

“He calls you an idiot when he’s being _nice_ , Harry. That’s his version of being _nice_.”

Harry could not actually argue with this. It was true.

“What he means,” said Draco, “Is that you have options besides a potions apprenticeship, if you want them. The Ministry would take you in a heartbeat, as would a great many Quidditch teams, just to name the most obvious candidates.

Harry sighed, sensing an ambush.

“I….” He hesitated, then decided to be blunt. “I love potions almost as much as flying, but it doesn’t come easily the way flying does. If I want to get any better at it, I have to learn, and Professor Snape is the best person for me to learn from. I’ve been learning from him for this long, I’m not stopping _now_. And you both are – grinning at me like demented lunatics. Why?”

“Thought you could use a reminder why you’re doing this,” Sirius said affably. “For when Beaky’s being an ars-“

“For when you are finding your apprenticeship trying,” Draco broke in smoothly. “Try not to poison him. Try not to be poisoned.”

“I will do my very best,” Harry promised, sketching an X above his heart.

“That’s a horrible muggle custom, isn’t it.”

“Probably,” Harry admitted, not entirely sure where he’d picked it up.

“Oh, go away,” said Draco.

“It’s my house!”

With Sirius living mostly with his muggle girlfriend, it _was_ very nearly Harry’s house, too, and he loved it dearly despite the weird creaky noises and its occasional flirtations with being haunted by evil.

Harry did, eventually, get out the door and to the apparition point, and thence dragged his trunk along the weedy lane to the address he’d been given.

Spinner’s End mostly looked – ill-kempt and in need of a good hair care potion, so exactly like its owner. Next to Grimmauld Place it was positively cheery, of course, so Harry put his trunk down, braced himself, and knocked briskly.

From within, something started to wail.

After a long couple minutes, the door was yanked open by a harried-looking Severus Snape, holding a silver-haired baby with a deathgrip on his long black hair.

Oh, right. That was the other thing about going to stay with Snape.

The baby.


	2. Jealousy is a Dragon

Hedwig hooted reproachfully at the two of them, from her cage on top of Harry’s luggage. After nearly a year running wild in what one could charitably call a back garden at Number Twelve, she was not very used to cages.

“I forgot the owl,” Snape said flatly. “Things will  have to be rearranged. Get inside.”

Harry followed him inside, as Minerva Delphi continued to wail and Snape talked low and soothingly to her.

“Hullo, sir,” Harry tried, keeping his voice low as he dragged in his trunk and his caged owl, closing the door firmly behind him. “Hullo, Miss Sn-“

“No.”

“…I’m not allowed to talk to the baby?”

“Prince. Minerva Delphi Prince. Prince is a good name.”

“Can I do anything?” Harry asked, since the baby was _still_ screaming.

Abruptly, he had an armful of teary, waily, hitting tiny human. He froze. Snape positioned his arms impatiently.

“Talk to her. I will make her something to eat, that sometimes works. Follow.”

Harry followed, attempting baby talk.

“Hello, Miss Prince,” he whispered to her, “I see your father is just as cheerful as ever and you’re picking up his delightful temperament. C’mon, what are you yelling about? What’s a baby got to be mad about, huh?”

He supposed he hadn’t been a cheerful baby, but then, his parents had just been murdered.

He followed Snape through the book-lined sitting room into the kitchen (through a hidden door covered in books), where his first lessons as an official apprentice turned out to be a rapid-fire explanation of holding babies, what to feed them for optimal growth, and what would happen to Harry if he dropped her or allowed a hair on her head to come to harm.

“I’m not dropping a baby,” Harry hissed, rather uncomfortable. (Because the baby was still yelling, and nothing he was doing was helping). “I wouldn’t.”

“Not even if a maiden needed to be rescued from a dragon across the street?”

“ _She’s_ a maiden. I’ve got one to rescue right here, I’m not going running off to find another!”

Snape held very still for a moment, back to Harry, before turning with smile and hooded eyes to take his daughter back and do baby things. He explained the baby things. Harry attempted to follow, and try to figure out why calling an innocent baby an innocent baby had given Professor Snape any pause whatsoever.

#

Some time later, after Harry had discovered that babies of her age could grab onto your hair quite _hard_ , Snape sank into an armchair in his sitting room, gesturing Harry to do the same on the nearby sofa. Snape was once again carrying the now-snuffling baby.

“You’ve been dealing with her alone since the Battle?” Harry guessed.

The house was in what amounted to considerable disarray, especially for Snape, who liked everything just so – pinned and labeled and jarred, depending on its type. The endless bookshelves had books stacked sideways, and a few that had been knocked down were still on the rickety table next to the sofa, unshelved.

“As if I would trust anyone else.”

Harry mentally rearranged his plans for his first day’s apprenticeship.

“Can I see where I’m to stay?”

Snape tore his gaze away from his silver-haired bundle.

“Of course.”

A wave of his wand opened another hidden door in the bookcase, leading up to a narrow stair.

“What do you have against doors, then?” Harry asked as he followed Snape upstairs. “Visible ones, I mean.”

Snape did not answer.

“You think doors are a security risk,” Harry continued flatly. “Because they involve people knowing how to get around your house.”

“I had forgotten how much you enjoy hearing yourself speak.”

Baby Minerva took this opportunity to join in the conversation, humming almost-words.

“There, there,” Snape said to her softly. “I’m sure he is very strange and bothersome, but we must put up with these things, my dear. Perseverance.”

Harry found himself abruptly, blazingly jealous of a baby. It burned in his chest like a dragon, and he felt for a moment like he might breathe fire. He breathed carefully, through his nose.

It’s just a baby, he told himself. I’m sure she’s very nice once you get to know her. Babies are nice, aren’t they?

The upstairs was dividing into a number of little rooms, most of which had actual visible doors. The hallway was lit by candlelight, and two doors stood open. To Harry’s mind, they spoke of a man so thoroughly distracted he couldn’t close his own doors.  

Snape opened a little wooden door that had previously been closed, which led into a plain, book-lined bedroom with a narrow bed, a narrow window, and a narrow desk. The whole place was narrow. Harry’s trunk fit at the foot of the bed, but that window wouldn’t fit an owl.

With a silent, snapping wand gesture, Snape transfigured the window, turning it from a narrow rectangle to a circular portal with latches on both sides. Harry blinked at it.

“Your owl will be able to come and go that way,” Snape said. “I expect her to avoid the rest of the house. Owls are unhygienic, and I will not have it.”

“That’s fine,” Harry said hastily. “As long as she can get in out of the cold or the rain she’ll be fine, she likes it outside.”

“I will leave you to settle yourself. Do not make loud noises. I will call for you when I want you.”

With this welcoming speech, Snape swept from the room, attention once again firmly hooked by his daughter.

Harry was definitely jealous of a baby, and he was definitely never telling anyone.


	3. Harry's Not Great at Obedience

The first thing Harry did was let Hedwig out of her cage to explore the room, test the owl-friendly latches on the tidy round window with its cloudy glass, and generally do her best impression of a grand old lady examining her new quarters.

The second thing Harry did was lie down on the narrow bed under the slanting roof and have a think. Yes, he’d sort of thought he’d arrive and they would start work immediately. Yes, he’d sort of thought babies just slept a lot and looked cute.

No, he did not particularly feel like staying in his room until called for.

With that thought, Harry got up again. There _were_ a few things to do to get settled.

Photographs of Sirius, Harry and Dudley at Christmas, Harry’s parents, himself with Ron and Hermione, one of Hagrid, and a final photo of Remus, Tonks, and their new baby arrayed across the back of his new desk, Harry nodded in satisfaction. He didn’t have photos of some of his friends – he should do something about that – but he had enough to make the place feel like his.

Hedwig hooted imperiously, and Harry glanced at her.

“Oh, alright,” he said. “Just one or two.”

_Dear Hermione,_

_I’ve arrived safely and there isn’t yet much to report. How’s the department? Got any more complaints from people about you bothering them about their house elves? Draco came over this morning to see me off and he’s finally stopped whining about his father and family tradition and house elves like serving._

_I don’t suppose you know anything about babies? Not because you’re a girl! Just because you know things about most things. Are there books about them?_

_Love,_

_Harry_

_Dear Ron,_

_Snape hasn’t killed me and buried me in his yard yet. He doesn’t even have a big enough yard! I checked. Are you legally obligated to search the place if you find shifty books? I spotted three or four titles from your big list of shifty books to memorize, but he does teach about the subject. Is there a pass he needs?_

_No clues yet about who he had a baby with. She’s really loud, though. Were you and Ginny loud? I’d ask your mum to come and help but she’d take over and Snape would have a fit._

Harry took a moment to try to put into words the depth of fit Snape would have if Molly Weasley turned up on his doorstep to tell him what to do about his own daughter, and decided that it would mostly convince Ron Snape was very crazy. Harry closed his letter with a few remarks about the latest Quidditch news, dashed off a quick note to Hagrid, and sent all three letters on their way with Hedwig.

Harry tried the door, which was unlocked. He opened and closed it a few times, just for novelty. Its hinges were silent and squeakless. He tapped his fingers on the doorknob thoughtfully, then opened and closed the door again.

Right.

Harry headed downstairs to make lunch, and only had a little trouble with figuring out how Snape’s hidden doors worked.

#

“I believe I must have been insufficiently clear,” Snape said softly from the entrance to the kitchen.

Harry glanced back at him then returned to his work at the stove.

“I made lunch. Tomato soup, grilled cheese, and I heated a bottle for Minerva. It’s about time to feed her, isn’t it?”

(He’d had no idea if it was time to feed her, but it had seemed inhospitable to make food for them and not for her.)

Snape moved silently past him and picked up the bottle, and settled himself at the tiny kitchen table with its two chairs to feed the baby. She, at least, was happy, if the chortling noises were anything to go by. Harry watched the various parts of feeding a baby with some interest for a few minutes, before recalling his task at hand.

Taking silence as assent, Harry portioned out bowls of creamy tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches onto two place settings at the table, and sat down opposite Snape, who eventually shifted Minerva to eat one-handed.

“Do you ever put her down?”

Silence.

“I can’t have done something to offend you yet. I’ve only been here a couple hours, I’m not that quick.”

“You underestimate yourself,” Snape murmured, and something in his expression seemed to thaw.

Harry busied himself with his soup. He should have added more pepper, but attempting to _locate_ Snape’s spice rack had been a little beyond him. The fact he’d been able to locate anything in this kitchen was an achievement, given that most of the drawers blended in with the surrounding woodwork and practically required a code.

“She cries if I put her down,” Snape said, playing with a strand of silver hair. “Ever since the Battle of Hogwarts. I… presume it will not last forever.”

“So you’re trying to put her happiness above your comfort?”

“Of course.”

Of course.

“Been getting any sleep?” Harry guessed.

“Sleep is not such a pleasure for me that I miss it.”

“I’ve got nightmares, too, but I still _sleep_.”

“Harry Potter, if I wanted a lecture on my choices, I have more than enough in my memories from your mother.”

Silence spread from his words like ripples from a falling stone, a truly forbidden topic dropped into a relatively normal conversation. Harry breathed. Minerva, completely unaware of conversational undercurrents, filled the silence with half-syllables and attempted whistling.

“Got anything else you don’t normally talk about that you’d like to throw into conversation? Maybe some secrets about Voldemort?”

Snape stood abruptly, Minerva protesting the shift (loudly). He paused, rocking her gently, face hidden behind his hair.

“I am going to put her down for a nap, and sleep for a while. The potions lab is upstairs. Entertain yourself, if you please, and we will resume this conversation this evening. Come.”

Harry followed, half-curious, half-worried. They went back upstairs, lunch half-eaten behind them and Snape pointed out in clipped words where Minerva Delphi’s room was and where Snape’s was. If she woke, seemed upset, or if _anything_ changed with her, Harry was to wake him.

“What changed your mind about sleeping?” Harry asked.

“I prefer to have control over my own tongue.”

Note to self, whenever you need Snape to do something, suggest not doing it would reveal a dire secret.

For instance, the location of his pantry. Harry would actually really like to figure out where Snape’s pantry was.


	4. Snape Gets a Much-Needed Nap

The potions lab was the only room in the house that didn’t feel small, despite the gentle slope of the roof above. It had two long benches of pale stone, and more than adequate light coming in through two large square windows at the end of the room opposite the door.

There was no visible ingredients cupboard. Harry glared at the room at large, but it did not reveal a door. He commenced poking about, and was shortly rewarded by a near-invisible line in the wood next to the open door to the hallway. He tapped it with his wand and it opened obediently, revealing Snape’s normal organization, attention to detail, and love of organizing things by purpose, not by name, type, or any other system that would make sense to a novice.

Except for a jumble on the main shelf, hastily stowed, which seemed to have been put away by the principle of not having time for this, not by the principle of order. Well, that wouldn’t do.

Harry was halfway through sorting preserved lily stamens between the dry and ruined and the salvageable and wondering what had possessed Snape, when there was a sound from Minerva Delphi’s nursery. He headed for the door, stamens forgotten on the lab bench.

The silver-haired little girl had escaped her bed despite the bars on it and was clambering around the room, alternating crawling and using furniture and walls to propel herself forward.

“Oh, Merlin,” Harry said, a whole new vista of potential problems related to the baby opening up to him. Stairs, for one thing. He peered out the hallway at the head of the narrow, twisting staircase. Stairs seemed like they must be a problem. Had Snape really been taking care of everything by watching her every moment?

She’d reached the door and was heading past him. Harry made a frantic snatch, scooping her up to her loud surprise.

“Shh-shh-shh, Minerva Delphi – you need a shorter name, you know – and I can’t bribe you with candy at your age, can I? Oh, I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t suppose you come with a book explaining you?”

She hit him. This was not incredibly informative, but at least did not involve more loud noises to wake Snape.

Harry attempted to settle her on the floor in the potions lab while he worked. He had drastically underestimated how much babies enjoy putting things they found in their mouths. Only half an hour’s silent, frantic analysis of the discarded cloth she’d found to chew on determined that it had been used to clean up a spill of Dreamless Sleep – which at least explained why she was unconscious on the floor, Harry thought guiltily, but even at her size it wouldn’t kill her.

With another guilty look at the dozing baby under the table, Harry decided he’d better make a tiny batch of awakening draught.

This, at least, went smoothly, even though he had to summon ingredients and couldn’t just lay his hands on them by instinct. Shortly, a small green bottle rested in his hand, smelling of fresh-cut grass and briskness.

Harry eyed the peacefully sleeping baby. He probably should not just leave her asleep. Who knew how much she’d gotten? She could be asleep for days, and that would be extremely obvious.

One drop of the potion should do it. He dabbed it on his finger, then on her lips. She smacked them in her sleep, opened blue eyes, and chattered at him in enthusiastic nonsense and blew damply on his hand.

She made a grab for his hand. He snatched it away. She made a deep, heartfelt sound of distress.

He gave her his hand back.

#

Harry almost got through Snape’s entire nap without having to call in reinforcements. Almost! He would have done it, too, even through potion cleanup, darting out into the hallway to keep her from tumbling down the stairs, sorting the mess of potions ingredients in the cupboard, and finding her gnawing on a snowy-white owl feather because he’d left the door to his new room ajar.

Except then, as he swore her to hasty secrecy and closed the door firmly, Harry realized her diaper needed to be changed.

He was not paid enough for this.

Still carrying the baby with his left arm, Harry rummaged for his little mirror with the other.

“Sirius?”

“Harry! Bored of him already?”

“Mmm. How do you change a diaper.”

“…you’re joking.”

There was a sound like fireworks in the distance.

“I’m really not joking at all.”

“…call Kreacher.”

Sirius ended the call, and Harry sighed. Sirius was always so short on calls when he was at work.

#

Harry lit the fire in the sitting room downstairs, paused to retrieve his glasses from Minerva, who had stolen them, and then picked her up again before she could investigate this bright warm thing.

“You’re going to drive me crazy, baby,” he told her in an undertone, found the jar of floo powder on the mantle, for once _not_ hidden, and tossed it into the fire. “12 Grimmauld Place.”

The fire flared green, and Harry kept a firm grip on the little girl in the green dress, taking a moment for a frantic, paranoid imagining of losing her in the floo network.

“Kreacher?” Harry called into the kitchen of Number Twelve, which he had left so recently.

Kreacher peered at him from very close by. If there was anything you did not need in your life, it was Kreacher’s face very close to yours. Harry did not flinch.

“Hi, Kreacher,” Harry said sturdily. “I need to know how to change a baby’s nappy.”

Kreacher blinked at him.

“Stand back, Master Harry. Kreacher will do it.”

“Er, you don’t have to-“

There was a pop as Kreacher disapparated. Harry pulled his head out of the fire, with a bad feeling about this. There was Kreacher in Snape’s sitting room, running a finger over the lamp and frowning at the dust.

Today was a _very long day_.

“This is Minerva Delphi,” Harry introduced quietly. “She’s Snape’s daughter, you remember Snape?”

Harry ignored Kreacher’s muttered comment about Snape, and indulged in letting the house elf take over for a few minutes. The baby was changed, smiled at in a terrifying way, and handed back to Harry making a happy blowing noise.

“I, er. Hope you liked the work,” Harry said awkwardly, since he couldn’t very well apologize for imposing without setting off a case of the hard done by servant whose masters did not appreciate him. (Kreacher was a very effective conveyor of feelings. Harry firmly reminded himself not to think about Easter Break.)

“Kreacher is happy to help Master Harry,” Kreacher said, watching the baby. “She is perfectly-formed.”

“I’m sure she’s very happy to hear it.”

“Who is her mother? The young mistress has a very good nose.”

“Er. I don’t know, Snape hasn’t said.”

“You will call on Kreacher if there is anything else to do for her.”

With this pronouncement, Kreacher disapparated once more. Harry sighed.

“If we’re lucky,” he told the baby, “We can finish cleaning up upstairs before Snape wakes up. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

She made a face at him and attempted to steal his glasses.


	5. Snape Begins as He Means to Go On

Harry was busily studying the ingredient cupboard, baby once more exploring the floor of the lab thoroughly, when Snape opened the hallway door.

“It honestly did not occur to me to tell you that she was not allowed in this room,” Snape purred, scooping her up. “Because that is _patently obvious_.”

Harry blinked owlishly at him.

“It’s easier to keep an eye on her in here.”

“How, precisely?”

“I know if she’s going someplace she’s not supposed to be going.”

Delighted to have her father back, Minerva Delphi tangled a hand in his long black hair.

“So cast a ward to alert you to danger or human presences.”

“So _teach me_ a ward to do that.”

This was a new Snape expression. Harry tentatively classed it as #33, ‘I would scream at you, but I do not wish to do that around the delicate ears of my impressionable daughter.’

“Come. I will prepare dinner and we will speak as I had planned to speak to you this morning.”

Harry followed Snape downstairs, feeling faintly uneasy about Snape preparing dinner for some reason.

#

Still, dinner was very good. Following a method much closer to Mrs. Weasley’s than the sort of cooking Harry was used to, Snape produced a chicken and potato curry in far less time than Harry could have managed.

“Watch that,” Snape commanded, and headed back upstairs in long strides. He returned with a blanket-wrapped baby holding a stuffed purple and white snake that moved quite realistically.

“Right,” said Harry, having stirred the curry and felt useless. “You’re going to explain why nothing in your house is _visible_.”

There’d been no toys out in her room, nothing in the room except the crib, in fact. It had felt very spartan indeed.

“If cupboards were visible, anyone could open them. For instance, she could,” Snape said, Minerva Delphi chewing on her toy snake.

“Does it have to be a snake?” Harry asked, still watching the soft toy.

“Yes.”

Harry decided the better part of valor was getting out plates and setting the table.

“You know no domestic spells at all, do you,” Snape observed from his seat at the kitchen table.

Harry froze, then decided a better answer was glaring at the man.

“You know no domestic spells at all and you are frightened of kitchens.”

“Yes, fine, would you _stop_?” Harry asked.

“I am hardly going to be a useful teacher if I do not pay attention.”

Harry decided to continue to set the table.

“Sit.”

“I think I’ll stand, thanks,” Harry said, not looking at him.

Snape’s silence was unusual enough that Harry glanced up at him. His dark gaze was intense but unreadable, even to Harry.

“I have resisted the urge to hit you for more than seven years now,” Snape murmured. “Pray assume I will continue, and cease reflexive disobedience.”

Snape didn’t _need_ to hit people. He used words like knives.

Harry sat, and glared at him, feeling more exhausted now than he had running around after a baby all afternoon.

“Observe.”

And with a slow, precise flick of his wand and a clearly enunciated spell, Snape set the table. Minerva Delphi exclaimed at the dancing dishes and reached out for one of them, which swerved from its path into her hands.

“No, little princess,” Snape said, snatching it from her. “Nothing with sharp edges for you until later.”

She burst into angry tears, and as Snape became thoroughly distracted Harry asked, “So, er, she’s got magic, then.”

“Obviously.”

“That’s… good.”

“It is only natural.”

After tears had been soothed, dinner seemed somewhat anticlimactic.

“I understand that you did some research into the nature of apprenticeship, before you brought it to my attention,” Snape said after a time.

“Well, Hermione did and she gave me the highlights.” He hastened to add, “I did my own reading about it later. That’s how I knew I could stand in as headmaster.”

Harry had filled in as headmaster during a hazy, sleep-deprived section of the war when Professor Snape had been busy being a horrifying statue, which Harry preferred not to think about. He didn’t need to encourage his nightmares.

“Explain it to me.”

“It used to be that all wizards and witches were taught individually, master to apprentice, before schools like Hogwarts were invented. Hogwarts was one of the first, and the best. It’s a model for the rest of the world. Certain professions are still taught that way, like healers and potion masteries, but most of the rest are on a trainee model. Everyone thought I was being weirdly old fashioned, when we agreed to it.”

“More or less inaccurate on the history, but the more important point is that you are missing the key point of the relationship. Master and apprentice used to be considered closer than parent and child, closer than husband and wife. The apprentice was an opportunity for the master to pass on everything they knew, renew it and refine it. They were, while the apprenticeship lasted, considered one person for the purposes of society and magic, with the old rituals. Only the very best and brightest could learn from the greatest masters. It was a sacred act.”

Snape spoke with reverence. Harry shook off the spell of words, squinted at him suspiciously, and took sip of juice.

“You’re talking about dark magic, aren’t you, with these rituals.”

“Certainly not. Blood magic, and thus not popular with modern thinking, but you are becoming something of an expert. Are you not?”

Harry looked at his hands and thought about his mother’s protections and his own death.

“It seems to run in the family,” he said, because Snape wasn’t the only one who could be nasty if he wanted to be.

“I wish to be assured that you understand the seriousness of what you have asked me to do.”

Harry glanced between Snape and the baby, and thought for a moment about ‘closer than parent and child.’

“I’m taking this seriously, sir.”

“Good.”

With that, Snape seemed content to eat and dote on the baby. Reminded, Harry brought up the very precarious-looking staircase problem.

“Do not be ridiculous. She is a witch. She could no more die from a fall down the stairs than you could.”

Harry thought about Neville, being dropped out a window by well-meaning relatives.

“We’re not going to test it, are we?”

“Of course not. Everything in good time.”

The food was good, spiced with Snape’s customary precision. Harry found himself growing sleepy and clumsy as the meal progressed, yawning and even spilling his pumpkin juice. He stared at his hand in some consternation, at the… faint green edge to the beds of his fingernails.

Oh, right. _That_ was why he’d been nervous about Snape cooking. Harry made a quick mental review of ingredient bases.

 “…you poisoned the potatoes, didn’t you.”

“They are a very useful vehicle for such things.”

“Right.”

Harry stood.

“A bezoar is failing the test,” Snape told him, mildly, and returned to playing with the baby.


	6. Harry Asks the Right Questions

Harry stumbled up the stairs to the lab, cataloging his symptoms as he went. Clumsiness was probably the start of paralysis. His mind seemed entirely clear, and, he stuck his finger in his mouth, his gums weren’t bleeding, that was good, probably not something from the adder family.

Let’s see… it wouldn’t just be one poison, that was too easy. This was Snape, so he’d have included aconite….

Harry paused to dig likely things he’d need out of the ingredient cupboard, while he was still able to use his hands.

Actually, Snape hadn’t said diagnostic spells were cheating. Harry hadn’t been hanging about with Poppy Pomphrey talking medical emergency care for three months for nothing. A quick blue spell later and Harry smiled to himself.

Hemlock, aconite, and acromantula venom. Harry blinked, considered that, and concluded that he was oddly charmed. Snape had followed through on his promise to poison him, yes, but with a paralytic, not a lethal poison. Not that Harry was really _enjoying_ dizziness, clumsiness, difficulty breathing, and the beginnings of blindness, but still, that was pretty nice, when you considered Snape as a whole person and a teacher.  

The three antidotes were easy – Harry had had them memorized since third year – but the master ingredient to bind the antidote together and the ratios took Harry more time, and working without sight was _weird._ Everything was very blurry.

#

Harry added the last of the powdered jade to his mixture and peered at it. Well, he couldn’t tell what color it was, and carrying it to the window to try to make it out seemed a terrible plan. Still, he was pretty sure he’d been right about jade as the central purifying element – acromantula were native to South Asia.

Harry drank his antidote, which tasted pleasantly spicy but did burn going down, and waited.

“You did not panic,” Snape observed from the doorway.

Harry turned, eyeing the dark blob standing silhouetted against the hallway light. He blinked, as his vision cleared. Snape was looking neutral, but that was neutrality #5 – you did a good job but I’m not comfortable admitting that. Harry grinned back, delighted.

“Why should I panic?”

“Many do, when confronted with an unknown poison.”

“I took the hint and grabbed your bezoar first.”

Harry dug it out of his pocket and tossed it at the man underhand. Snape snapped it out of the air with one hand, and returned it to his ingredient cupboard.

“I would not have been surprised if your nerve had been impacted, after this past year.”

“My _nerve_ is fine. Gryffindor, remember?”

“Even stalwart Gryffindor may reach their limits.”

That reminded Harry, he really needed to make sure Pettigrew was locked up. He hadn’t heard what happened to the man during the war.

“Anyway, what was there to be frightened of? Sure, being paralyzed wouldn’t have been fun, but-“

“You were not frightened even before that.”

“What was there to be frightened of?”

“Death, perhaps?’

Harry began cleaning up after his antidote-creation.

“Nothing to be frightened about with death,” Harry said. “It’s the next big adventure, that’s all.”

“You sound more and more like Albus every day.”

“He was onto something.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Ah – the sort of magic that’s the opposite of sacrificing someone else’s life for your own gain? Unicorn stuff.”

He’d never actually explained to Snape about his magic unicorn powers, and did not really want to phrase it that way to the man’s face.

“Perhaps you can explain the logic of it to me at some time.”

“Well… I could try. It’s not very logical, though, not really. It’s more… whimsical. Like Quidditch – you can call plays all you want, but it comes down to mostly instinct.”

“How wonderfully irritating.”

“I didn’t ask you to be curious about it,” Harry said mildly, corking the bottle of powdered jade and moving on to cleaning his mortar and pestle. “It’s the sort of thing you have to figure out yourself, like a quest. You can’t really explain it to someone and have them get it right.”

“You would think after you killed someone they would stop haunting you,” Snape murmured, having moved over to look out the window at the sunset.

“Seems to _me_ that having killed someone is a pretty good reason to be haunted by them.”

Harry glanced around, paranoid that Tom Riddle’s ghost would pop out of the woodwork.

“Pray do not speak of that again,” Snape murmured. “I am not a superstitious man, but that would put a strain on _my_ nerves should it come to pass.”

Harry knew they were thinking of the same man, and he could only agree.

“Where’s Minerva Delphi?”

“You do not actually have to say her entire name every time you speak of her. She is in her room, entertaining herself.”

“I thought you couldn’t put her down.”

“I prefer to avoid it.”

Harry glanced up at him.

“Then why do it?”

“Idiot. I was observing.”

Observing Harry being poisoned, Harry interpreted. That was strikingly responsible of Snape. Well, it wasn’t like Snape actually made a habit of murdering his students, Harry supposed.

Harry put away the last crystal vial and stretched.

“Anything else tonight?”

“I have left reading for you in your room. Enjoy.”

“Night, then.”

Living in the same house as Snape was _weird_. Brushing past him in the hallway, imagining him wearing a dressing gown. Very weird.

Harry found a stack of four books in ancient black bindings on his bed, all titled in the most archaic-looking way. He picked the first one up and opened it. Horrible, tiny print, little strange diagrams and star charts – the sort of thing he’d absolutely hated when he first started learning potions, and magic generally.

Harry did not like being predictable. He moved the books off the bed, lay down, and began to read happily.

#

As Harry drifted off to sleep that night, he turned the events of the day over in his mind.

It wasn’t exactly that Harry thought Professor Snape would be a bad father. In his most private heart of hearts, he thought Professor Snape would be quite a good father. It’s just it seemed a betrayal by the universe that anyone ever had thought it would be a good idea to give Severus Snape a baby.

And yet a baby he had, a cute little infant who cooed and yelled and who he treated with genuine if stern affection and deep familiarity.

He gave the little girl a purple and white stuffed toy snake. She made baby noises at it.

Harry wondered if there was a government department of parenthood he could call and lodge a protest.

Who had thought this was a good idea?


	7. Breakfast and Letters

The next day was Tuesday, and Harry woke with a song in his heart and good wishes for all mankind on his lips.

To be slightly more technically accurate, he woke five times in the night because the baby was not sleeping well and wanted everyone else to share her delight with the night-time world.

Over the breakfast table, where Snape had once again taken over the stove before Harry could get there, Harry asked, “Are nights always like that?”

“She does not enjoy having her own room.”

“Yes, but are nights always like that?”

“Do you ever shut up?” Snape murmured to the frying pan.

“Not unless I make Minerva Delphi start crying.”

“She dislikes me leaving the room. Always.”

Harry had been startled this morning that Minerva Delphi got to sit in her own (adorable) chair at the table while Snape made breakfast. Studying the lines of Snape’s shoulders and the way he was not looking at Harry, Harry decided to classify today as a high chance of murder day, and not push too much.

Snape served them scrambled eggs, toast, and fried tomatoes. Harry cast poison detection charms.

“Twice in a row would be predictable,” Snape murmured, most of his attention on Minerva Delphi’s experimentation with throwing eggs across the room.

“Twice in a row when I think it would be predictable would be a lesson in life’s unpredictability,” Harry retorted. “I have _met_ you.”

“Apparently.”

With a snort, Harry pulled out his letters that he’d brought down from upstairs, and settled in to read.

_Dear Harry,_

_I’ve included a number of wizarding and muggle parenting books, though you might visit a bookstore yourself! I’m afraid I know nothing about babies, really, though of course I should. I ended up having the most fascinating conversation with the goblins about goblin childrearing, which is quite different!_

Harry skimmed the three paragraphs about goblin child rearing, which seemed very strange to him at a quick glance, and went on to the next part of Hermione’s letter that seemed relevant.

_Wizarding parenting seems quite old fashioned, but it also does have some useful-looking sections about accidental magic and safe wand storage! You certainly don’t want her accidentally turning herself part elephant or being kidnapped by fairies, which happens more often than you might think according to the three books I read._

Hermione was a great friend.

_You may want to consult the muggle parenting books for childhood development markers and age-appropriate activities and socialization, and Harry, I want to emphasize this very much: it is absolutely and completely illegal to test potions on babies, even if it would be useful data for a study. It’s illegal and I will send you to Azkaban. I know you get along with the Dementors now, but if Kingsley is elected they won’t be in charge of the prison anymore anyway – I have some departmental guidelines for humane treatment of them as magical creatures half-drafted, there are lots of precedents if you look. Prison would be very boring and awful, so please don’t make me!_

_Love,_

_Hermione_

Harry folded the letter, put it carefully aside, and asked Snape, “Do I seem like the sort of person who’d test potions on a baby?”

“No. Princess, no.”

Well, that was an interesting little piece of symmetry, even if Harry hadn’t been told not to attempt to feed himself by putting the food in his hair.

“Hermione thinks I need the warning.”

“Granger will at some point learn that behavior permissible by some in an eleven year old is less charming in an adult witch.”

“You have never once thought Hermione was charming.”

“True. I am aware my perceptions are outside the mainstream of thought.”

Harry took a moment to process that, and again decided not to press.

“So, what are we doing today?”

“I am catching up on correspondence and work. You are reading and watching Minerva.”

Harry suppressed a sigh, but apparently not well enough.

“You neglect study for the practical application in every subject. You are lucky enough that magic is forgiving, given enough feeling and power, but it will not take you further. You need depth of understanding, and for that you must read.”

Harry especially hated when it sounded like Snape was probably right in his lectures.

“In addition, if you sulk, I have ways to make your life interesting.”

Harry collected himself quickly, and went on to his next letter.

A few minutes later he looked up from Ron’s skeletal description of Auror training (Ron was not the most eloquent of writers) and said, “I’m invited over to the Weasley’s for Sunday lunch.”

“Pray do not spend all your time stating the obvious.”

“Well, can I go, then?”

“Yes.”

Harry found this patently unhelpful.

“It is a distraction, but Molly and Arthur Weasley turning up on my doorstep convinced I had killed you and fed you to snakes would be far more distracting,” Snape elaborated, after a little while longer.

“That’s true,” Harry allowed.

“They are not in the camp that looks forgivingly on me for my role in Albus Dumbledore’s death,” Snape said, chilly tone an odd contrast to his continued baby care. “I imagine it will be unpleasant, and I wish you every joy in it.”

“They’re really great,” Harry said loyally.

“I’m sure.”

“Anyway, you wouldn’t feed me to snakes. That’d be a really inefficient way to feed snakes.”

“This would be your masterful education in Care of Magical Creatures, would it?”

“I don’t know what anyone was talking about, this apprenticeship is going to be loads of fun,” Harry said, swooping Minerva up in his arms before Snape could argue. “C’mon, baby. Let’s go read.”

#

It was not that reading and watching the baby were Harry’s only activities over the first week of his apprenticeship. There were letters to his friends to read and write, kitchen chores to argue about, baby care to argue about, potions to argue about, whether or not Snape was taking care of himself to argue about, and whether or not poisoning Harry was a reasonable reaction to Harry wondering if Snape was taking care of himself to argue about. The week seemed to pass quickly, though that might have been the sleep deprivation talking.

On Saturday, they went to visit Minerva McGonagall at Hogwarts.


	8. A Trip to Hogwarts

 “Why the bus, anyway?” Harry asked as they passed the Hogwarts gates on the interminable walk up from Hogsmeade.

“Apparition with babies is not advisable, nor is the floo network, and I do not have time to fly today.”

The floo wasn’t advisable with babies, but dragging them around on broomsticks was fine? The wizarding world never stopped surprising Harry, but this surprise was more of the ‘of course they’re that silly’ variation. Probably best not to pursue the subject.

Hogwarts in summer was not so different from the castle in winter, but Harry had last seen the place scarred by battles and the repairs were now complete. He blinked around owlishly behind his glasses, and shifted Minerva Delphi so she could ride more comfortably in her sort of baby sling. Babies rode in slings, apparently. He was just lucky she wasn’t a _large_ baby, even if she was a clever one. A number of her sounds, he’d realized over the past week, were very close to words.

“You didn’t say she was talking,” he commented to Snape as they swept up the entrance steps.

“Talking?”

“Dada, mama, that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure she will progress past it quickly enough.”

“You have no poetry in your soul, do you?”

“At this point, I am startled I have a soul left for you to complain about, idiot.”

Harry glanced at his teacher, who had not turned around or slowed down. Harry glanced down at the sleeping baby – midmorning was one of her usual naptimes, he was beginning to sense – and then moved quickly to keep up.

#

At the entrance to McGonagall’s quarters, which Harry had never seen and was deathly curious about, Snape took Minerva Delphi and said, “I imagine you will be running along now.”

“I will?”

“You are still friends with Hagrid, are you not?”

“Oh! Right, yes.”

Snape turned away, even as the door opened, and Minerva McGonagall in all her tartan splendor blinked at them from behind her spectacles.

“You didn’t say you were bringing Mr. Potter,” she said, “And you’re early. Is everything alright?”

“We said eleven,” Snape said stiffly.

“I certainly didn’t expect you to actually be on time with a baby,” she said severely. “I just didn’t want you arriving at three and having me interrupting her naptime. Come in, come in.”

They came in, and shortly there was tea and little bits of food that a baby could try.

“And how is Minnie today?” she asked Harry, after a little bit of conversation about people Harry didn’t know and didn’t want to try to keep track of.

“Sleeping,” he reported. “I don’t want to disturb her.”

“Of course not.”

“I had thought Potter could-“

“Don’t be ridiculous, I want to hear some of what you’re not telling me, and I shall not get any of that if I send him away.”

Thus commenced one of the awkwardest, quietest interrogations Harry had ever been party to. Yes, Minnie was eating some solid food. No, she was not going to play outside. Yes, they talked to her. No, she did not have any flying toys.

Harry was left with the sneaking suspicion of two things: Minerva McGonagall firmly agreed with him that no sane person would trust Severus Snape with a baby, and he was never going to be able to stop thinking of his silver-haired charge as Minnie.

He did like the rhythm of Minerva Delphi, though… it sounded grand, somehow, like a real witch name. Minnie Delphi? Minnie Del? Minnie Dee? That sounded almost like Mindy, which he’d always thought was a nice name.

“Mr Potter, are you getting enough sleep?”

Harry jolted guiltily out of his reverie and lied automatically, “Oh, sure, lots.”

McGonagall sipped her tea and informed Snape, “My apprentice has been seeing Mind-Healer Tracy, on my insistence. He’s doing very well.”

“As if Potter’s records wouldn’t end up in the Prophet within six hours of him talking to anyone.”

“Wait, you’ve thought about this?” Harry asked.

“Of course I have. I am responsible for you.”

Harry glanced between them, not sure if it was sleep or something else that was making this conversation hard to follow.

“There’s that, as well,” Snape said to McGonagall.

“More tea?” she asked Harry politely.

He nodded, and there was more tea.

“Have you considered my offer any further, Severus?” she asked Snape, as Harry busied himself on the floor entertaining the slowly awakening Minnie, who was currently entranced by having feet.

“I have. I have an apprentice, and - other considerations.”

“You know the house elves would be happy to help.”

“I cannot imagine most of the parents would be happy to have me.”

“Rita Skeeter aside, you are a war hero. I should think them very happy to be lucky enough to have you back here.”

“I have never enjoyed beating basic facts into the heads of idiots.”

“You are Hogwarts accepted headmaster, Severus. I cannot change it. You cannot change it. So we must come to some agreement before the school year begins.”

“I have other considerations.”

“I should like to know how you expect to raise a daughter without income,” she said tartly. “Mr. Potter-“

“Potter, you are dismissed. Go.”

Harry rose, glanced over his shoulder to see Snape scooping Minnie up and handing her to McGonagall in blatant distraction, and made his escape without hesitation. He hadn’t really thought about Snape’s finances, not being in the habit of thinking about anyone’s finances, but he supposed Snape didn’t come from an old wealthy family like the Malfoys. Harry’s thoughts lingered on food eaten, potions ingredients wasted, and books obviously newly-purchased for his apprenticeship. Why hadn’t Snape mentioned-

Pride, of course, Harry answered himself. Pride and base stubbornness and a complete inability to ask anyone for help. If he taught Minnie anything, it would be that she could ask him for help and he’d give it to her, Harry decided firmly.

#

Hagrid was thrilled to see Harry, apparently having bought the Prophet’s going theory that Harry was Mysteriously Missing.

“I’m not missing,” Harry said crossly, over extremely large and somewhat alarming sandwiches. “I just don’t want to talk to reporters about everything, and I’ve gotten pretty good at invisibility charms.”

“Don’t let’m hear that, ‘Arry. They’ll start askin’ what you ‘ave to hide, see if they won’t.”

“I don’t think I have anything to hide.”

This might be the first time in Harry’s life that that was true. No embarrassing relatives to hide, no secret mysteries to solve or missions to undertake, no talking to snakes, no voices in his head. Harry found himself smiling.

“Good! So, me and Grawp-“

Hagrid’s tale of his adventures with his half-brother were entertaining as ever, containing the usual amount of over-sympathy for giant spiders. Harry turned the conversation briefly to Hagrid’s lesson plans for the coming year, and escaped without too many questions about his new apprenticeship, with a promise to write more often. Harry’s mental estimation of how much patience Snape would have with someone taking an interest in his life and his daughter proved eerily accurate, as he met the man on the staircase.

Snape stared at him.

“I’m good with people,” Harry answered the silent question, turning back ‘round and heading down alongside Snape.

“Are you.”

“That or I know you way too well, take your pick.”

“Explain.”

“According to my last estimate, you can only be standing up and moving around for thirty minutes without getting tired right now because of almost dying. You start pacing during uncomfortable conversations after about fifteen minutes. It’s been forty-five.”

“Was it I who taught you to accurately time things?”

“Think so.”

“More fool me.”

Snape really was tired and grumpy. Harry thought about offering to take Minnie, observed how Snape was holding her, as if she might disappear if he didn’t hold on tightly enough, and thought better of it. He liked his head not bitten off.

The trip back on the Knight Bus involved Harry blatantly hiding under disillusionment from the other passengers and Snape ripping an unfortunate soul to verbal shreds. Harry watched a grown man cry and tried to feel sorry for him, but mostly felt as if the man shouldn’t have yelled at Snape on a public bus while carrying a baby. He was just lucky Snape was too conscious of witnesses to curse someone in front of them, Harry thought with cheerful cynicism as he hopped down off the bus several long blocks of rowhouses from Snape’s home. One more longish walk later, Snape growing paler and more fixed of expression, they were finally done with the day’s labors. Snape deposited Minnie on the floor and half-collapsed into one of his sitting room chairs, while Harry dealt with the post owl patiently waiting outside his door.

“It’s a card,” Harry reported, closing the door behind him to prevent errant baby escapes. “A calling card, I didn’t know they did those, from – Narcissa Malfoy. She says she’s coming to visit tomorrow.”

Harry looked up from the card to Snape's expression, eyes narrow and glittering, and realized this was not happy news.

Right. About forty-five minutes with nothing in particular to worry about was a longer streak than was usual in Harry's life, so that was alright. 


	9. Suspicions and Anger

“What’s going on, sir?” Harry asked, because Narcissa Malfoy visiting you could never be a good thing.

“A… visit between old friends, I am sure,” Snape said slowly. “Or more probably, attempting to prevail upon me for some political purpose.”

“I can actually tell when you’re lying by telling the truth,” Harry commented, closing the door and folding his arms. “You forget to insult me.”

“Your point.”

“If the Malfoys are causing trouble, I want to know about it.”

“You know as much as I, perhaps more. I presume your acquaintance with Draco Malfoy has continued.”

“It has. I suppose we’ll see tomorrow.”

“I shall see tomorrow. You shall go reassure the Weasley clan of your continued survival with all your limbs.”

“They should be more concerned about my internal organs, with the stuff you’ve been feeding me.”

“Feel free to tell them so at your earliest convenience. You may go tonight, if you wish.”

“You know-“ But Harry did not get a chance to continue the argument, because the baby interrupted their attempts to see who could draw blood with words first.

Despite his own protestations, the next day Harry did keep his appointment to spend lunchtime with the extended Weasley clan for food, conversation, and conspiracy. The conspiracy entirely consisted of him and Ron, as Ron’s recent training as a detective was giving Ron the idea that he had a finely honed nose for mystery.

“I’m telling you, mate,” Ron said, having absconded with Harry to sit on the branch of one of the trees by the family Quidditch field. “There’s something fishy up with Snape and that baby. No woman in her right mind would ever date him. No woman _ever_.”

Harry thought about  his own mother and was silent.

“What’s that look for, then?” Ron asked.

“You’re getting a little too good at reading people.”

“Ta.”

“He had a crush on my mum,” Harry said. “in school.”

Ron’s horrified face was everything Harry could have wished for, but somehow it didn’t quite capture Harry’s feelings.

“I don’t think they ever….” Harry trailed off, waving his bottle of butterbeer to convey ‘ever.’

“Course not, mate,” Ron said firmly. “Your mum had good taste, right?”

“Right.”

“We’re sure he isn’t a vampire?” Ron asked.

“…Snape?”

“Yeah, him.”

“He’s not a vampire. The potions I used to heal him wouldn’t have been nearly so effective on vampires.”

“Our options are,” Ron said slowly. “He met a woman and had a baby with her, or he nicked it.”

“He could have had a baby with a woman _and_ nicked it. Her. She has a name, you know.”

“Minerva Delphi Prince,” Ron said. “You know I looked her up and she doesn’t have any records at the ministry? Or in the Muggle records. She’s a ghost, except there’s a ghost registry and she isn’t there either.”

“…seriously?”

“Seriously! Even if he isn’t being evil, which I’m only saying because I know you’d argue, he’s _definitely_ not doing his paperwork right. That’s illegal, that is.”

“You looked this all up yourself?”

“I got Percy to do it.”

“Ron, you _didn’t_.”

“Sure, why not? He’s not being nearly so much of a plonker these days, he’s right tolerable.”

“Ron,” Harry said with growing horror. “Percy’s going to want Snape to _do_ the paperwork. He’s going to – to turn up at his doorstep with a clipboard. And forms.”

“So?”

“So Snape’ll kill him,” Harry said patiently. “He’s getting no sleep and he’s dead terrified someone’s going to realize he’s not qualified to be a dad and she’s going to disappear or be stolen by fairies or something.”

“He wouldn’t _really_ ….”

Ron trailed off.

“Find out when Percy’s going to get all his ducks in a row, and I’ll make sure to be there and distract Snape. With, I don’t know, a stuffed snake toy. He has those now.”

Ron laughed.

“So, what’s the baby like?”

Harry was happy to explain what the baby was like, at some length.

#

When Harry apparated back to Spinner’s End, he took a moment to consider the possibilities, and cast a quiet disillusionment charm on himself. He crept up to the door, and listened.

“While I agree that family is important,” Snape was saying, “I cannot agree that it has relevance in this case. I am no longer your son’s teacher.”

“If you do not stop being evasive, Severus Snape-“

“My dear woman,” Snape said, and Harry cracked the door open to hear clearly, “Mine is not the position which is precarious. Your husband’s business of gathering the remnants of pure power is at a delicate stage, is it not? And your son does not have Harry Potter’s talent for slithering out of danger.”

Right. If they were at the stage of threatening each other, Harry thought he rather owed it to Draco to put a stop to it, even if the conversation _was_ interesting. He ended his disillusionment, knocked briefly on the door, and came in without pause, catching the end of what Mrs. Malfoy was saying.

“-and that is entirely my business, sir.”

“Mister Potter,” Snape said, eyes hooded, hands steepled. “As ever, your timing is exquisite. You know Narcissa, of course. Narcissa, you know my apprentice.”  

This set off a round of incredibly polite pleasantries. Harry would rather have had a duel.

“Potter. Go check on the experiment upstairs,” Snape said, after everyone was assured that everyone else knew the Secret Wizard Politeness Code. Only the dark, warning look in Snape’s eyes kept Harry from being snide about the whole affair.

“The-“ oh. “Of course.”

“What sort of experiment?” asked Mrs. Malfoy, taking a delicate sip of tea.

Harry wanted to yell at her not to drink anything Snape gave her, in this mood, but decided it was best not to yell things just because Ron had him paranoid.

“A confidential one, I’m afraid,” Snape said with perfect false apology. “I’ll be up directly, Potter.”

Harry opened the staircase door, and the sound of an unhappy nearly-toddler’s cries filled the room. Harry paused, hand on door, and looked at Narcissa Malfoy, who took another sip of tea, expression unchanging, and said lightly, “You must introduce me.”

“Get out,” Snape said, in the tone he usually reserved for Harry.

“That’s hardly polite, Severus,” she said, just as calmly as before.

“I am done being polite. Harry, go.”

Harry jerked himself into motion, and paused on the first stairs.

“You’re not going to, er,” he said to Snape, leaning down to look at the man.

“I am not going to murder a woman in my own home.”

Mrs. Malfoy teased, “You’d need to at least set up an alibi first, wouldn’t you?”

“Indeed, madam,” Snape said, and the door closed.

Minny Dee was a _very_ unhappy baby, but quieted with care eventually. It did, however, leave Harry feeling the beginnings of quiet rage, inside his own chest. There was something very _wrong_ about leaving a child alone in a room where its cries couldn’t bother anyone, just because you were entertaining guests and didn’t want them to know it existed.

Next thing you knew the child was befriending spiders and giving them names, and….

“We’re going to have to yell at your father,” Harry murmured to Minny, who made a mild grumbling noise where she was nestled against his shoulder, clean and dry and tired. “We’re going to have to yell at your father a _lot_.”


	10. Understandings and Evasions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry understands Snape and Snape understands Harry, but neither of them understands themselves.

“Minny’s down for her nap,” Harry reported as he put the kettle on.

“Good.”

“Don’t ever leave her alone like that again.”

“…excuse me?”

Harry assembled the tea tray, sugar and slices of lemon and Snape’s horrible old teapot that looked like it was older than Harry and twice as likely to at some point to have been used as a blunt instrument in a fight.

“I thought you didn’t like it when I repeated myself, sir.”

“You will not speak to me in that tone.”

“What tone’s that?”

“Insubordinate,” Snape murmured. “This is Black’s influence, the cur.”

Harry twisted around to glare at the man, who was currently looming in the kitchen doorway.

“At least Sirius TRIES to be a good dad! What’re you trying to do, then? Play _politics_?”

“You know NOTHING.”

“Because you don’t _tell me_. How’m I supposed to help if you won’t tell me what’s WRONG?”

A chilly silence fell, as neither man reached for the wands they both had close to hand.

Snape made a small, thoughtful sound, expression shadowed.

“I will consider your concerns. Make the tea.”

He swept from the kitchen, leaving Harry feeling light-headed and jittery, as if he’d been about to plunge into a fight to the death and his opponent hadn’t shown up for the duel.

Make the tea, Harry. Not something reasonable like Sirius, who at least knew something about what normal people acted like, or something utterly unreasonable like Uncle Vernon. Just… tea. Make _tea_.

Harry would make a great deal more than _tea_.

#

Snape’s expression when Harry brought through two trays of tea, tiny cucumber sandwiches, and jam tarts was somewhat exquisite. Harry stored it away as a precious memory.

“Do you often take your temper out on food?” Snape inquired, taking a strawberry jam tart as if they hadn’t been screaming at each other fifteen minutes ago.

“Yeah.”

“Exactly how did you make pastry dough so quickly?”

Harry considered the haze of anger he’d been working in.

“Magic?”

“This does raise a point about advanced potion making,” Snape said, claiming his teacup and absently but obviously checking it for poison. Harry did the same.

Everyone satisfied they were not going to poison each other this afternoon, they sipped their tea. The orange peel flavor went well with the tarts, Harry thought.

“What point is that, sir?”

Harry would come back to proper childcare, he would. Just… later.

“When one is in touch with the flow of one’s power and the balance of ingredients, testing recipes becomes unnecessary. Your magic knows what you want, and will summon it to you. The magic of a child is unformed, useless, and powerful. The magic of a student is forming, useless, and weak. The magic of an adult is once again powerful, and you must fight the instinct to be rigid.”

“The way if you want to fly, you can’t be thinking about the mechanics of it, sir?”

“Very similar. If you’re lucky, you will have someone with you during those rare moments of invention to write down what you did and how you did it. They do not come often to any one wizard, and very seldom does that wizard remember what he did.”

“Has it ever happened to you, sir?”

“Once.”

That, Harry thought as he bit savagely into a tiny sandwich, was not helpful.

“So, what did you think you were doing, with Minny?” Harry asked.

“I had monitoring spells in place,” Snape said stiffly. “She was in no danger.”

“There’s more to it than – than _danger_. Just look at Voldemort.”

“And what, pray tell, is his relevant to this interminable conversation?”

“Dumbledore and I talked about his parallels with me. Being orphaned, being… well, one difference was how old we were orphaned, and what happened afterwards. I went to relatives, who weren’t great but could have been worse, and he was orphaned younger and went to an orphanage.”

“You are trying to make me angry. Why?”

Harry paused to consider the question, and found his ship of thought quite run aground on the reef of self-reflection.

“No need to answer,” Snape said, as Harry wrestled with why Snape being angry with him back felt better than just being angry. “I understand.”

Harry wished Harry understood.

“I will watch Minerva this evening,” Snape continued. “You will do as you please, but I suggest you review the _Compendium,_ we will be discussing it tomorrow.”

“About Mrs. Malfoy-“

“Not now.”

“When, then?”

“Soon.”

Harry frowned at him, and bought time by pouring them both more tea and serving up more little sandwiches and tarts. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand himself, he didn’t understand how Snape could do that to a little girl-

It wasn’t like Snape at all, was it? He’d barely been able to put her down, didn’t like her to be farther from the same room from him. When Harry had come in, Snape had been irritated, but he hadn’t been vibrating out of his skin. Even now, Snape was controlled, focused, faintly at ease – as if everything was under control and he was being completely open, in his way.

It was incredibly untrustworthy, and Harry realized it was also something he _did_ understand, no matter what Snape thought he knew about Harry.

“You forgot her,” Harry said to his teacup. “You were nervous, and you occluded, and you occluded so hard you forgot she _was_ anything but a project upstairs.”

Silence was his only answer. A hit, a hit, a palpable hit.

“You lecture me about taking too many of my own potions, and then do this?” Harry asked, watching his stone statue of a teacher. (His teacher had been much less annoying during that brief interval as a stone statue.) “How many other things are you still occluding, sir? The war’s over.”

“Yes,” Snape said slowly. “The war is over.”

“Shouldn’t you be putting things back in regular order, then, sir? Unpacking the things you’ve hidden away, not adding more things to hide from yourself?”

“I do not need a lecture from you, apprentice.”

“Then you’ll be happy to lecture me about the appropriate use of occlumency, sir,” Harry said, and smiled at his teacher entirely without mercy.

“Are you done?”

Not roaring at Harry to get out was, in Harry’s view, uncomfortably submissive coming from his one-and-only spy-and-potions-teacher.

“No, I think I’ll have one more tart,” Harry replied.

“You will note down the recipe,” Snape said, and on that oddly domestic note, a temporary armistice was called on the topic of childcare and secrets. Harry contented himself with it, at least for now, as the rest of the day passed into routine. He wouldn’t be stealing Minny Dee tonight and running off, at least.

Instead, he took his broom out for a night flight along the river, the only light the stars shimmering in the black water, and he danced around the old mill’s chimney in a dizzying spiral and for a little while, wind whistling in his ears, nothing mattered at all.


	11. Percy Attempts to be Helpful

_Dear Harry,_

_Good news: Percy’s not going to storm the snake den! He says as long as Snape fills in the forms he won’t have to, so here they are. He also says that St. Mungos is doing a very good course of War Weariness remedies at the moment and to “pass along the recommendation.” Any more clues? What did Mrs. Malfoy want? Will keep following up on things here._

_Ron_

_PS. I’m learning to transfigure sea creatures this week! Percy says it’s dead useful in a pinch, because you can always undo it._

It was Tuesday. Harry was beginning to have a bad feeling about Tuesday. His letter from Ginny about quidditch strategies had been much more restful. Harry flipped through the attached sheaf of parchment and tried to decide if he was happy about this or if it just made the feeling of impending doom worse.

“Er, sir?”

“Yes?”

Harry was aware he was losing their little war about who could last longest without bringing up anything personal, but in a good cause….

“Ron’s sent over your Ministry paperwork for Minny Dee.”

“Ronald Weasley.”

“We’ve got… birth record, Hogwarts registration, godparents registration, form for telling the Muggle government she exists… some other stuff I don’t really understand….”

“Give that to me.”

Harry handed it over.

“It looks like it’s all set except for the mother’s name and your signature,” Harry pointed out, feeling faintly helpful.

Snape read, silently.

Harry waited.

Snape summoned a quill and scribbled briefly here and there on various pages, signing in green flourishes.

Minny made grabbing motions at the quill, and both Harry and Snape paused, but the motions were just motions, not a child’s magical gestures. They unfroze with some relief, but Snape took the cue to distract her with fruit.

“If we return these by the same method, will they reach their destination without hazard?” Snape asked with apparent calm.

Harry distrusted his apparent calm immensely, and only nodded. His distrust was repaid once he actually read over the forms.

“Mother unknown muggle?”

“She was a dark-haired woman I knew briefly,” Snape said, as if reciting his grocery list from memory. “Minerva was a surprise.”

Harry ate a toast soldier and considered this story.

“You don’t sleep with random women,” he pointed out. “If you did, I’m not sure you’re the sort of person who’d sleep with a muggle. You’re a bit….”

“I am a bit what?” Snape asked softly.

“You’ve got no interest in muggles, except maybe to feel sorry for them in a condescending way.”

“Albus Dumbledore thought I was reformed, and a muggle supporter.” Snape commented, glancing up from his attempts to get Minny to eat without throwing melon at Harry.

“I don’t think you want to murder them,” Harry protested, and then modified this to, “More than you want to murder everyone, anyway, I don’t think you want to murder them _specially_.”

“Why, if I am such a murderous individual, are you sitting down to breakfast with me?”

It was a good question, and Harry folded up his papers to avoid them being splashed by a baby’s food choices while he thought. If he’d taken a different job, he’d get more time off, more money, less chance of being poisoned, and there were other potion masters in the world, even. After he’d published his first monograph, he’d even corresponded with a few of them.

The real answer would probably make Snape angry, if Harry could figure out what it was, so Harry went with something true and misleading, since being misleading was what they were doing today.

“I’m contrary.”

“That is, indeed, one of the kindest ways to describe your personality,” Snape murmured. “Pray do not grow up to resemble him, Minerva.”

“I doubt she will. The hair, for one thing.”

Minny Dee’s hair was a startling silver, which Harry suspected would irritate the hell out of Snape once Minny was of an age to be noticed by boys. Harry couldn’t see Snape being an easy-going sort of dad about that sort of thing, really.

Snape ignored him to talk to the baby, which gave Harry a chance to think.

“You changed the subject on her mum pretty quickly,” Harry observed.

“The woman is dead. The laws regarding muggle recognition are still such that I do not have to name her.”

“You don’t have to name her if she was a muggle, you mean.”

“That’s right.”

“You think anyone will believe that?”

“I believe many people will believe it, should they care enough to take note of the matter. One child is not of note to most of the wizarding world, Potter.”

“You don’t _have_ to act incredibly suspicious, you know. It’s not a requirement.”

“I do not have to do anything to conform to expectations, either.”

“Pretty sure you’re hitting people’s expectations of you right on the nose when you’re secretive about things for no particular reason.”

“Quite.”

Minny Dee made a small hooting noise, then whistled to herself, “Foooooood.”

Harry paused to stare at the silver-haired baby waving a piece of melon.

“You didn’t say she was talking,” Harry observed.

“…no, I did not,” Snape said.

“Who’s a clever girl, huh, Minny? I would’ve thought you’d be more interested in saying dada, though, hm? Dada?”

Minny pronounced a variety of syllables at him that had nothing to do with food, parents, or words, and Harry leaned back in his chair, sighing.

“Is it normal for her to be talking yet?”

“Yes,” Snape said.

Harry glanced at him at the sheer tonelessness of this answer, and found Snape watching Minny with an odd brightness in his eyes. …pride?

“You could tell her she’s done well,” Harry said, jaw tightening. “It wouldn’t hurt you, and it’d be good practice for when she’s older.”

“I am going out today,” Snape said abruptly. “I have research to conduct. You will watch Minerva.”

“You’re leaving me with her. Alone.”

“Assuming you think yourself capable?”

“Yes! I mean, yeah, sure.”

“Good. Do not disappoint me.”

Snape was out for most of the day, and Harry quickly began to realize how much work taking care of the baby was without the man. It wasn’t, he thought stubbornly, that he wasn’t capable. He just was used to Snape swooping in when she started crying or otherwise did anything complicated. Today everything was complicated, and nothing Harry did was good enough. She’d been fretful ever since Sunday afternoon, and with good reason in Harry’s opinion, but it did nothing to make dealing with it more restful. Snape did not explain his errand, and Harry had too much of a headache to ask.

That night the household woke four times to the baby crying. It was not restful.


	12. Unplanned Revelations

Harry’s dreams were full of rabbits, and the rabbits were screaming. That was a little strange.

He blinked, and then he was awake, cheek resting on the giant copy of the Compendium, a book so densely packed with spidery handwriting that Harry had been reading it for weeks without an end in sight. Harry had a suspicion it was adding more pages as he read. Books could be like that. He disentangled himself from the book slowly. There weren’t any rabbits here.

What there was was a crying baby, again. If Harry knew his baby timetable, and he was getting pretty good at it by now, it would be at least fifteen minutes before she was asleep again.

Harry patted around for his glasses for a minute before realizing the darkness of his little bedroom was not particularly blurry. He reached up and adjusted them. Falling asleep with your glasses on had to be a bad habit, he was pretty sure….

With a sigh, Harry levered himself up and down the stairs to make something hot to drink.

“You should be asleep,” Snape said, coming in and sitting down at the kitchen table. By way of answer, Harry poured two mugs of cocoa, claiming one for himself, and sat down as well. He sipped his cocoa, while Snape stared at his as if to divine the mysteries of the universe from its chocolatey depths.

“I apologize for waking you,” Snape said.

“I thought that was Minny.”

“I went to check on her, and woke her.”

“Oh. …why were you awake?”

“You are not the only one with troubled dreams.”

It was either too late for this or too early, but Harry would take the momentary openness.

“What do you, um. Dream about?”

“You,” Snape murmured. “Offering your throat for the Dark Lord’s knife.”

Harry froze, fingers tightening on his mug until it burned. He put it down.

“I don’t think there were actual knives involved,” he said, trying for levity.

Snape reached up and rubbed at the white scar that stretched up the column of his neck, where the snake had struck. Usually, it was covered by high collars. Usually.

“This is not something you can fix with humor,” Snape said.

“I wasn’t trying to fix it,” Harry lied.

Snape turned his attention to his cocoa, and perforce so did Harry.

“Are you continuing with this idea?” Snape asked, when their cocoa was half-gone and Harry’s nerves had almost gone away.

“I’m going to visit Draco today, if that’s what you mean.”

Yesterday having slid into today sometime between falling asleep last night and this hour of the morning, it was now Saturday, a respectable day for wizards of good breeding to visit each other. (Harry’s etiquette lessons still sounded like a combination of Kreacher and Sirius’ mother’s portrait, something he would never admit to Sirius. Harry prided himself on not having any good breeding, but Saturday had still seemed a reasonable idea.)

“Very well. In that case, do ask to see the library and inquire whether you may borrow _A History of Wizards Most Foul_ and _Foundations of Evile_.”

“…why?”

“They are rare books and it is economical to borrow them, rather than buy them.”

“I mean,” Harry said, running a hand through his hair, “Why do you need those books?”

“Research.”

“Research about _what_?”

Snape smiled, and did not answer.

#

Draco Malfoy was something approximating a friend to Harry, who had grown used to Draco’s cat-like tendencies towards evil, with clear boundaries about bigotry (don’t) and climbing Harry like a tree.

Which was why when Draco streaked out through the open door of the manor, white fur puffed up around him, and clambered up Harry’s robes to crouch on Harry’s shoulder and hiss at his mother following along behind, Harry’s first reaction was, “Draco, I thought we talked about this. Hermione gave us that lecture on personal space, remember?”

Draco hissed, by way of answer, and Harry eyed what he could see of the lanky white long-haired cat Animagus.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked Mrs. Malfoy.

“Not at all, not at all,” she said, gesturing him inside. “Darling Draco was simply making a point to me.”

“It wasn’t a point about him having manners, was it?”

Mrs. Malfoy laughed.

“No, I’m afraid not. I asked him to inquire with you about a few matters of concern, and he was unhappy with my interference in his affairs. Entirely understandably.”

Harry nimbly grabbed Draco from off his shoulder and tucked him against his chest. He was really getting a lot of experience holding small creatures in ways that weren’t uncomfortable, not that Draco appreciated it. Draco responded by sinking claws into Harry’s fabric-covered arm.

“Are you supposed to admit to your subtle interrogation plans?” he asked, curious.

“I find it disarms the forthright to warn them ahead of time.”

They headed through the entrance hall into a small dining room, where lunch was already set up. The first course appeared to be a rosy-pink soup, with fresh-smelling rolls and a chilled silver pitcher of something. The table setting was, predictably, immaculate. The napkins were folded into peacock shapes. Harry sat down, careful not to disturb Draco, and petted Draco’s ears absently.

“Thanks for having me,” he remembered to say. “I was planning a subtle interrogation of my own, actually. Will you or Mr. Malfoy be joining us for lunch?”

Draco hissed again.

“I think not, Harry,” Mrs. Malfoy said warmly. “Do you find warning people effective, yourself?”

“Never tried it before. Draco, are you having soup or do we need to get you fish?”

Draco appeared to prefer to curl up on Harry’s lap, tuck his nose under his tail, and sulk.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Harry informed him, not touching the sleek white fur. He knew a trap by a cat who wanted to shred his hand when he saw one. “I can’t very well come up with wild theories about my latest mystery with you if you spend the whole time hiding under your tail, can I?”

The tip of Draco’s tail twitched. This, Harry thought, required a bit of coaxing. He heard Mrs. Malfoy leaving, but didn’t look up.

“I mean, if you’d rather I solved it with Ron…. He’s being really helpful, actually, even if Hermione thinks we’re both being ridiculous and should mind our own business.”

The cat hopped down off of Harry’s lap, transformed into a blond young man who tilted his head at Harry in a cat-like gesture, grey eyes glinting, before taking his seat and picking up his soup spoon. The midday sun and the pale marble walls combined with the tall, arching windows to cast Draco as the center of gravity, the only dark thing in a sea of white, blond hair nearly glowing in the warm light. 

“Good afternoon, Harry.”

“Good afternoon, Draco.”

“How have you been?”

“Better than last year,” Harry said after a pause to think about it. Sleep deprivation was a small thing, after being hunted through the streets, witnessing murders in his dreams.

“Aren’t we all.”

“Are we just ignoring you running away from your mother?”

“We must observe the proprieties, first. Now you ask me now I’ve been.”

“How’ve you been, Draco.”

“Quite well, thank you. Do you like the soup?”

Harry tasted it. It was fishy somehow, and also spicy, with a hint of….

“Is that saffron?” he asked.

Draco blinked at him.

“I have no idea. It’s just soup.”

“Sorry, I’m getting into a habit of analyzing flavors. Snape’s poisoned me three times in the past two weeks.”

Draco dropped his spoon with a tinkle and splash, red soup scattering across the white tablecloth and napkins.

“He’s done _what_ ,” Draco hissed.


	13. Visiting with the Malfoys

Luckily, Harry knew the household cleaning charm for the occasion. With a silent sweep of his wand, the mess reversed itself, sweeping soup back into Draco’s bowl and rescuing the white tablecloth from oblivion – or being spotty. Much the same thing. It bought him a moment to think.

“I mean we’ve been testing me on poisons and antidotes.”

“By poisoning you.”

“This is very good soup.”

Draco picked his spoon up and resumed eating. Harry ate as well. It really was a very good soup – light but rich, with a fish broth full of tomato and carrots. It seemed French somehow.

“I’m not going to yell at you,” Draco said, watching Harry coolly. “I’m just going to tell Hermione and Black.”

“No.”

Draco smiled at him.

“If there’s nothing wrong with it, why can’t I tell anyone?”

The verbal _traps_ of talking to Slytherins, argh.

“Sirius doesn’t like Snape anyway. Hermione wouldn’t like the idea of me being poisoned. They wouldn’t….”

Understand.

“Understand?” Draco echoed. “Of course they wouldn’t. It’s not understandable, Harry.”

“If you dislike it so much, why not talk to him yourself?”

“I’m not a very confrontational person,” Draco purred.

Harry took a moment to appreciate this growth of self-knowledge and character, because a few years ago Draco would have started the fight before remembering he hated fighting.

In all things, concentration, Harry.

Harry concentrated on his soup, and his argument.

“I could talk to him.”

“I’d like you to be there when my dear cousin talks to him. On that note, Harry, I’ll have your word you won’t interfere.”

“Sorry?”

“It would be good if you were there for the discussion, but I won’t have you interfering.”

Harry thought about a tower, standing frozen and helpless in the night, and a flash of green light.

“I’ll interfere if I need to.”

“How about a deal,” Draco said, finishing his soup and calling for a new course with a tap of his wand. Harry stared at his small glazed game bird, garnished with new potatoes, and tried to feel anything but irritated and trapped.

“What sort of deal?”

“You agree not to interfere, and I won’t tell Hermione or Ron.”

The day Draco had decided he was on a first name basis with Hermione and Ron had obviously been a terrible day.

“That’s better?”

“That’s up to you. Eat, Harry. Being poisoned hasn’t done something to your appetite, has it?”

“I cured that _very thoroughly_ , thank you.”

“Hmm,” Draco hummed. “Tell me about that. What did you use?”

“Oh, it was tricky, but he’s been sticking with a theme that uses jade to bind….”

Distantly, while Harry ate and drank the light, sparkling juice and explained poisons, he was aware Draco was diverting him. That was alright, though. Harry didn’t actually want to start a duel with Draco over Cornish game hens. Waste of food.

Not that Harry was comfortable dueling casually right now anyway, under the circumstances….

“Fine. I won’t interfere.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

If only because Harry did not particularly want to _win_ a duel with either Snape or Sirius.

Draco, oblivious to Harry’s thoughts, said, “See? You can see sense sometimes. What would you like to do after lunch?”

“There’s a few things I’d like to find in your library, actually.”

“Not interrogate my mother?”

“Tempting though that is, I think she’d turn it around on me and learn more than I meant her to.”

“Of course she would.”

“Thanks, Draco.”

“Family is important,” Draco said piously. “Speaking of, how _is_ that cousin of yours?”

“With everything? He’s doing alright in school, actually. He has a part time job fixing motorbikes Sirius found him, too. It’s still more comfortable if we don’t see too much of each other, though, what with everything.”

What with the way Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had been murdered a few years ago, mostly. It hadn’t exactly been Harry’s fault, but he hadn’t saved them, either. He hadn’t even really been able to mourn them properly, and he knew that Dudley knew that.

“It isn’t as if I’m going to object.”

“Because he’s a muggle.”

“Yes, obviously,” because he was still _Draco Malfoy_ , “But also because it means more of your time for things you actually enjoy, like spending time with me.”

“I would have thought you’d have other things to do. You have friends, and politics.”

“You _are_ politics, Harry. Surely you know that. You can’t get away with avoiding all political opinions forever.”

“Neither of them are Death Eaters or mass-murderers,” Harry grumbled. “Hermione’s the one who’s handling that.”

“She’s handling it as minor ministry official Hermione Granger, not friend of the Chosen One Hermione Granger. People just think you’re off hiding, or possibly in St Mungo’s for some horrible malady.”

“I’m _busy_.”

“You’re hopeless,” Draco corrected.

“You can’t possibly actually want me interfering in politics. I’d have to take a stance on your inevitable election fight with Hermione, then. Would you want that?”

Draco stilled, gazing out one of the tall windows at the lawn, caught in thought. Harry dragged his attention back to his lunch.

“No. You’re completely right, I wouldn’t want you coming down on the wrong side out of loyalty. Feel free to continue to abstain from politics like a moral, upstanding hero.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“You’re upset with me.”

“They’re going to try to kill each other. Snape and Sirius, I mean.”

“Hm. You see, I understand Professor Snape was rude to my mother, earlier this week.”

Harry made a face. This was probably entirely true, but… no. No, that was fair.

“Speaking of your mother, I need to look at your library. Maybe borrow a few things.”

“Ah. You’ll need father’s permission, then.”

Draco might be a friend, but Lucius Malfoy was still a stone-cold killer who thought it was a good idea to give an 11 year old girl a cursed diary and set a basilisk on a schoolchildren. The fact that he was a treasured ally in the fight against Voldemort was more of a puzzle to Harry than anything. Harry had _been there_ and still wasn’t sure how Mr. Malfoy had inserted himself so smoothly into reconstruction, gently making peace between factions and avoiding all responsibility for his own political ambitions and terrorist activity.

This was one of many reasons Harry’s response was to make a face.

“Don’t be a child,” Draco informed him.

“Fine.”

Harry got up. Draco tapped the table with his wand again, and their main course cleared itself and was replaced with delicate glass bowls of chocolate mousse decorated with lemon peel.

Harry sat down again.

#

Lucius Malfoy and his wife were sitting out on a sunny marble terrace overlooking their sweeping grounds and assorted peacocks, talking softly as if they were the only people in the world. He was looking better than he had just after being released from Azkaban – still aged and a little mad, but clean-shaven and calm. Narcissa Malfoy kept an elegant hand resting on his arm, and only reluctant looked away from him to greet Harry and Draco.

“Did you have a nice time, Draco?”

“I did, mother, thank you. Father, Harry would like to borrow a few titles from the library for his apprenticeship. Would that be alright?”

“What titles?” Mr. Malfoy asked Harry.

“ _A History of Wizards Most Foul_ and _Foundations of Evile_.”

Narcissa Malfoy laughed, and asked, “Really, what was your apprenticeship in, again?”

“Potions.”

“Of course,” Mr. Malfoy said. “Anything to help a friend of the family.”

Harry had once heard Draco claim Fenrir Greyback as a friend of the family. _Why_ a murdering terrorist got to have a loving family with a son who adored him, Harry could not figure out. There really should be a bureau about who was allowed to have children… no. No, that was a Voldemort thought. No.

“Right. Thanks.”

Nothing like being around ‘proud purebloods’ to make Harry feel common and awkward.

“Come on, Harry,” Draco said. “You know where the library is?”

“Sure,” Harry said. “Voldemort used it a lot, didn’t he? We’d talk there sometimes.”

Harry hadn’t precisely relished the talks that the strengthened mental connection with Voldemort had caused, but some of them had been educational, not disturbing, and most of the library talks had been oddly calm.

As they went back inside, the only sound was the call of birds in the distant hedgerows.


	14. Personal Growth Through Violence

“Did you do that on purpose?” Draco asked, after they’d found Harry four books to borrow, two at Snape’s request and two because they’d looked interesting.

“Do what?”

Draco looked at one of the bookshelves, rubbing his left forearm, and Harry got it.

“Oh. A bit.”

“Ah.”

Harry studied Draco’s profile, and poked him in the side.

“Not to upset you. Your family’s just the only people I can really talk to about him, except Ginny, and she doesn’t have… context.”

Draco turned his head enough that Harry could catch the glint in one pale eye.

“I’m the one you can talk to, really. Then you should tell me, about his daughter.”

Harry hefted his books.

“Let’s talk on my way out.”

“Fine.”

Harry took a minute to enjoy the marble staircase, the weird giant vases of flowers, and the quiet, before speaking again. The sky was clouding over now, the perfect golden sunlight being eaten up by skids of grey.

“She’s that mystery I mentioned,” Harry explained. “Is she what your mother wants to know about, too?”

“Obviously. I’m trying to dumb my plotting down enough that you can follow along and learn something. This is the part where I’ve lowered your defenses, and now I’m interrogating you.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Harry muttered.

“Just trying to help.”

“What I want to know is why she cares. She’s just a baby.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Draco asked, leading the way along the overly tidy gravel drive. Did the Malfoys sometimes take cars? They didn’t really seem like car people, honestly.

“Not really.”

“She’s what he was memory charmed over, all last year. Beginning in the middle of last summer, just before I got back from school. Whatever her story is, it’s the highest security Death Eater secrets.”

It wasn’t that Harry had been ignoring that, exactly, he just didn’t see how it fit in with the rest of it. Something Voldemort had been plotting should have been, should be, something deadly and awful. His plots didn’t come in cute and mundane. They didn’t spit on you, unless it was some sort of poisonous snake venom.

“I don’t know,” he said to Draco, barely avoiding running into Draco’s tall iron front gate. “She’s just a baby.”

“She’s probably cursed,” Draco said.

“Who’d curse a child?” Well. “I mean, Voldemort, obviously. Snape doesn’t act like she’s cursed.”

“Could be a different level of the memory charm. It’s a more likely explanation than him having a girlfriend, isn’t it?”

Harry had to admit that Minerva Delphi being a ticking timebomb of a murder weapon _was_ more likely than Snape having a girlfriend. It didn’t simplify the problem.

“I’ll keep an eye out. Take care of yourself, Draco.”

“I always do.”

Harry snorted, and apparated.  

#

Harry had time to think, that afternoon, in between sorting through the latest order from the apothecary and scrubbing everything. He’d promised Draco he wouldn’t interfere between Sirius and Snape. He wasn’t going to go back on his word. Still, he hadn’t said anything about anyone _else_ interfering.

Harry made a few arrangements, and went back to his work.

#

 “Hello, Beaky.”

It was eight in the evening. Snape was in the living room. Sirius hadn’t knocked.

“Black. To what do I owe this singular pleasure?”

Harry, who had been taking his worries out on what would tomorrow be a pie, put down his cleaver and drew his wand. He wasn’t visible through the open door between the kitchen and the sitting room, from here. That would do.

“I knew you were a slimy, evil git, but I thought you had some sense knocked into you, somewhere along the way.”

“Black. What do you _want_.”

“Poison, Snivellus? _Poison_?”

“He hasn’t come whining to you.”

“Of course he bloody well hasn’t! That kid wouldn’t whine if someone took all his skin off, he doesn’t know _how_.”

“I’m aware.”

Harry thought this was all rather unfair, and that holding still was awful. He was going to _strangle_ Draco.

“Explain to me how you’re not taking advantage of an abused kid to play sadistic games.”

“It’s not a game.”

There was a rustle of fabric. Harry edged sideways, and saw Sirius looking wild-eyed and mad, hair wind-ruffled, and Snape standing, wand drawn, tall and imperious.

Later, Harry wasn’t sure who threw the first spell. They moved at the same time, spells flying silently or exploding in horribly acidic fizzing, cutting through the front doorway as if it was made of paper. The only blessing was that while the spells were black and red and orange, blue, clear, and silver, none of them were the acid green of the killing curse.

There was, he realized, a pattern to the duel. Snape was reacting as Sirius moved or before he moved, countering his spells with a minimum of effort, and advancing, one step at a time.

He’s a legimens, Harry wanted to shout. Close your mind, you know _how_.

He’d promised. Not that that would have held him, really, except Harry’s instincts were saying something to him, and he had lived a long time listening to them. They were saying to watch.

Sirius ducked out the door, using the wall as cover, and Snape followed. Harry glanced upstairs, where no sounds echoed down the stairs, and decided it was probably safe to follow.

The thing about duels most people didn’t understand was how quickly they ended. By the time Harry had made it through the wreckage of the sitting room, and paused to repair a crumbling bit of wall that looked structural, the duel was over.

Snape was standing over Sirius, wand aimed precisely at his throat. Sirius’ wand was nowhere to be seen. The street was dark, but streetlights illuminated the scene in a sickly yellow.

They were going to get into so much trouble with the Ministry, Harry thought sickly.

“Transform and I’ll take your head off,” Snape was saying. “Did you know that a wizard attacked in his own home has every right to lethal self defense? Why, you could be anyone, under the guise of polyjuice. I would be doing my civil duty to snuff you out.”

Snape didn’t have to sound so _cheerful_ about it.

Sirius was snarling, a low, inhuman growl.

“You’ve picked up so many bad habits from that mutt you call a friend.”

Harry didn’t want to startle Snape, but he also wanted the man to know he was there. With a twinge of mental effort, he lowered his occlumency barriers. It felt rather like being naked, which wasn’t a mental image anyone needed. He was going to _kill_ Draco. Punch him, anyway.

Harry caught Sirius’ eye, and Sirius didn’t lunge. He held still, instead. Good.

“Killing you has been one of my fondest wishes for such a very long time, Black. Ever since we were at school together, and you and your pack of bullies decided, yes, you just didn’t like my face very much. I have dreamed of this.”

“Why don’t you do it, then?” Sirius asked.

Harry held his wand low and ready. He didn’t _feel_ like Snape would murder someone in front of him, but it’s not like he had any evidence to back it up.

It was a pretty stupid feeling, come to think of it.

“I think,” Snape said softly, “Perhaps your friend Lupin is right. Perhaps we have grown up. I doubt I will ever like you, Black, but… I find I do not want to kill you. Perhaps I’ve just seen enough blood.”

Since Harry had always sort of felt that Professor Snape was stuck in a perpetual, angry adolescence, that was surprisingly mature of him. He _was_ an adult, Harry supposed. Technically.

“Or you’re lying, and you know Harry’s standing behind you and you wouldn’t get the chance,” Sirius said, pushing himself up on one elbow. There was a cut on his scalp, and the only reason Harry could tell in the dim yellow light was because it was dripping blackly down his forehead and into his eyes. Sirius moved to wipe it away.

“Be still,” Snape ordered, and Sirius froze. “You think his presence would dissuade me, if this was what I wanted?”

“I think you know he’d hex you in the back if he actually thought you were going to murder someone. He’s a good kid, no matter what you’re trying to teach him.”

“I will have your word that you will not attack me over my teaching methods, Black, or I will be forced to defend myself.”

“You’d take my word?”

“I think you want Harry to think you and his father were upstanding heroes, defenders of the light. The sort of man a _good kid_ could look up to.”

Harry would rather like to point out that he was standing _right there_ , but on the other hand, he didn’t want them to ever stop talking.

“Is everything alright?” asked the tiny little old lady who lived next door, standing at the edge of the circle of light and looking both absolutely terrified and perfectly, wonderfully brave.

Everyone’s wands disappeared, not quite by magic, and Snape turned smoothly, robes swirling, to smile at her.

“Yes, Mrs. Campbell. This man has just crashed his car into my house, and we were exchanging insurance information.”

She glanced between Sirius, bleeding on the pavement, the front of the house, which looked shredded, and Snape, wearing casual evening robes.

“Where’s his car gone, then, Sev?”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Campbell. My cover story needs a little work.”

“You always were a rascal,” she agreed. “But this doesn’t seem like something one can cover up quite so easily, somehow. What are you doing with that poor man?”

“Having a row.”

“I can see _that_ ,” she said. “Hullo, Harry. How are you?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Campbell,” Harry said. “Would you like to go inside and have a cup of tea?”

“Oh, well.” She looked again at the front of Snape’s house, where his living room was clearly visible and clearly a wreck. “I’m not sure there’s space, to be honest.”

“None of it’s structural,” Harry assured her. “Er. I mean. Perhaps you just don’t have your glasses?”

At least Minerva was fine. Harry'd made sure of that.

“If you’re going to be working with Eileen’s son, you really must try to learn to be a better liar,” she said. “He’s always been so good at it.”

Harry caught the breeze of a spell sweeping by him, and her gaze went distant, before focusing on Harry again.

“I think I would like that cup of tea, Harry, dear. One doesn’t expect grown men to be having a fist fight and throwing things at this time of night. Dear me, he does seem like he might be taking after his father….”

Snape and Sirius had been talking quietly behind him, and Harry caught the end of it as Snape raised his voice out of whispers, saying, “You might as well come inside so I can do something about that head. I’ll never hear the end of it if you bleed to death.”

Harry went next door to get her a cup of tea, and tried to put  _taking after his father_ aside for later.


	15. Arguing Like Adults

After tea had been made and Mrs. Campbell seemed to have collected herself a little bit, Harry ventured, “You know his parents, then?”

“Eileen and Tobias? Oh, yes, and Sev ever since he was a small boy. He was such an awkward child.”

So nothing much had changed, then.

“What were they like?”

“You know the saying, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?”

“Er. Yes.”

“Sev was always quite polite to me.”

“That’s… nice.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting back, dear?”

Harry didn’t especially want to.

“Yes, I suppose so. Good night, Mrs. Campbell.”

Harry was almost out the door when she spoke up again. Since her home reminded him eerily of Mrs. Figg’s, though it lacked Mrs. Figg’s roommate, the Smell of Cats, he’d been rather glad to (almost) get away.

“Dear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Campbell?”

“Call me Jane, dear. Is everything alright, over there? I was quite worried.”

“It’ll be fine,” he assured her, half turning in the doorway to look back at her and then glancing away, uncomfortable. “Just fine.”

“Do learn to be a better liar….”

She trailed off into the vagueness of the recently memory charmed, and Harry guiltily skittered back to his place of employment, doing mental maths about whether or not someone would be dead on the floor by the time he got to said floor.

Take one (1) ancient schoolyard vendetta and one (1) unstable former Death Eater, carry the one (1) unstable former prison inmate, add them together and shake with lemon juice and you ended up with a cocktail of Draco has a lot to answer for.

He was pretty sure his math broke down somewhere in there into drink mixing, but that was Not His Fault on account of grown men brawling in the street like angry dogs.

Harry stepped through the newly recreated front door of Snape’s house and found Sirius crouched behind the coffee table in dog form, fur bristling, growling deeply as if doing his very best impression of a jackhammer. The fur between his ears was slicked down with blood.

Speaking of angry dogs.

Snape was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a red bottle of a wound potion.

“-childish,” Snape continued, “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. You have wasted more than enough of my time this evening, Black. Potter, go upstairs.”

“No.”

“Potter.”

“She’s fine. I got a babysitter.”

Snape swiveled to look at him, and only long exposure to murderous looks let Harry keep his hands loose and gaze even in response.

“A house elf,” Harry elaborated, “Not Draco or something.”

Only a slight widening of eyes indicated that Snape was contemplating the idea of Draco Malfoy, babysitter, but it did freeze the man satisfactorily. Harry, content, knelt by Sirius and rubbed his chin gently.

“You really need to think before you come crashing in to rescue people,” Harry told his dog. Er. Godfather. “And it’s me saying that.”

The scruffy black dog snorted wetly at him.

Shortly, Sirius was no longer bleeding or a dog, Snape had deigned to sit down on half of his couch, the other half having been thoroughly murdered, and Harry was attempting to copy one of Draco’s lounging postures leaning against a bookcase, for lack of a spare chair.

“You seem recovered,” Snape observed.

Sirius bared his teeth at him in what probably passed for agreement, in angry animagus.

“Very well. Get out of my house, Black.”

“I need to talk to Harry.”

“By all means. Good night, gentlemen.”

Snape rose, and swept from the room, taking the stairs two at a time. Harry blinked.

“So, Harry,” Sirius said, and then stopped.

“Er. Yeah?”

The door to the staircase closed, Harry couldn’t hear anything from upstairs. It was making him nervous.

“You have better things to do than look at me?”

“…well, he’s up there with Kreacher.”

“Sh- shoot. Kreacher hates him.”

“Wonder why.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better go make sure nothing’s exploding. Snape’s in one of his moods, isn’t he.”

“You broke into his house.”

“He could have a sense of humor about it.”

Sometimes, Harry was reminded, Sirius was very hard to understand.

“You BROKE into his HOUSE.”

“Harry, he’s _evil_.”

“Evil people can have houses! He has a _kid_ here.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if he poisoned her, too.”

“Stop it!”

Sirius looked at him from beneath the shadow of his hair, and Harry glared right back, fists clenched.

“He started it.”

“You’re not _twelve_! Do I have to call Remus?”

“Remus would be on my side,” Sirius said, but mulishly, as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying.

“Why don’t you just _check_ then.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

They stared uneasily at each other.

Sirius sighed, and touched his headwound gingerly.

“Don’t _poke_ it,” Harry protested, running a hand through his hair. If he pulled all his hair out, would Sirius be more reasonable?

Sirius shrugged, and dropped his hand.

“C’mere, kid.”

Harry accepted the resultant hug grumpily, but did feel better about it once he’d had his hair ruffled and Sirius had promised to let him know what Remus said.

Harry lay awake that night, thinking about different endings to that fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly short, but I wanted to get something up since it's been a while. I went on vacation! China is interesting and exhausting.


	16. The Free Press

Yesterday, there had been a fight to the not-death and destruction and memory charms in the streets.

Today, there was pie. It was a pork pie, with a glazed crust and lots of crunchy bits. You couldn’t count on a lot in life, but pies were pretty consistent. You followed the recipe, you got a pie. You ate the pie. It was a formula for life.

Harry just wasn’t very hungry today.

“Eat,” Snape ordered. “Also, read your letters instead of staring at them.”

Harry opened the first of his letters, marked in Sirius’ scrawl, and didn’t say anything snide.

_Dear Harry,_

_Remus says I’m not to come over there and start anything else, so you’ll just have to visit me. Not sure what to say. I said he’d be an evil git._

_Let me know how you are._

_Sirius_

The next letter was addressed in Remus Lupin’s tidy copperplate.

_Dear Harry,_

_I had a rather strange conversation with Sirius this morning, and in exchange for a promise of babysitting he has prevailed on me to write to you and assure you that if you need a neutral party to talk to about his fight with Professor Snape, I will stand ready. I can only imagine how trying they are in combination, though I do remember some moments from school…._

_Do write, Harry. Tonks and Teddy send their love._

_Remus Lupin_

Harry put the letter down, feeling rather warmed by the brief sentiment. He hadn’t really paid as much attention to Remus as he’d like, even though Remus had been his dad’s friend. It was nice to think Remus didn’t hold that against him.

“You have matters to attend to?” Snape asked, and said in a much warmer tone, “My dear, you must eat.”

Harry glanced up, startled, and found Snape concentrating on Minny Dee. That made more sense.

He had a few bites of pork pie anyway, since he’d been reminded. There was something dependable about pork pie.

“Potter. Your schedule.”

“I… should go see Sirius.”

“Then do so.”

“You don’t need-“

Snape’s expression summed up ‘ask a stupid question, get a nasty look.’

“Right,” Harry said.

#

Sirius was in a bad mood. Sirius, who had had most of his good moods burnt out of him by dementors, was almost always in a bad mood, but it was particularly noticeable today. Still, it was hard to be too unhappy after stopping in to Fred and George’s shop to check on business and buy half the store using Harry’s owner discount.

“You just like me for my joke shop stuff,” Harry accused, as he accustomed himself to the gaunt face and dark eyes of his guardian topped off with donkey ears, laden with four shopping bags worth of pranking goodies.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sirius said, at his most innocent.

Harry held the door for him, and then followed him out into the summer air.

“What are you going to do with all of that, anyway? It’s illegal to use it on muggles.”

“Only if you’re caught,” Sirius said carelessly. “It’s for you.”

“Sorry?”

“Got to keep Beaky on his toes, don’t you.”

Harry stared at him. Sirius seemed content to wander along, without a care in the world. Sirius got very carefree when he was in a bad mood. Harry didn’t know anyone else like that at all.

“I’m glad we know how to solve our problems like adults,” Harry said. “Prank people, that’ll really help.”

“Glad you agree.”

Harry was so tempted to copy his godfather’s tendency to growl at things.

“Mr. Snape! Mr. Snape! Would you say you considered Albus Dumbledore a father figure? I wrote to you about my new book, I do hope you’ll comment – what do you think of the title _Snape: Scoundrel or Saint_?”

Rita Skeeter and her glasses were pursuing Snape down the street. His arms full of Minerva, everyone looking at him, and a parcel of books tied with string under his arm.

Oh, Merlin.  

“No comment,” Snape said.

Sirius’ hand on Harry’s arm stopped his forward momentum.

“You don’t want her poking at you instead, do you?” Sirius asked in an undertone.

“I do, actually,” Harry said, and shook him off, sliding himself in between Snape’s retreating form and Rita Skeeter, notebook in hand.

“Harry! Harry, how wonderful to see you. Have you emerged from your solitude to embrace the new day?”

“I’m doing some shopping.”

“Harry,” she said, with all the endless warmth of someone he was currently blackmailing, attempting to edge around him to follow Snape, “Excuse me, I was just in the middle of an interview-“

“Surprised you aren’t doing a book about me. Considering.”

“Oh, I _am_. Aren’t you happy to hear that?”  

Harry blinked at her. The conversational ball, busily batted back and forth, fell to the ground and rolled dismally away. Metaphorically.

Rita Skeeter was, sadly, an expert at throwing conversational lobbies at people.

“Have you seen much of Professor Snape since your victory, Harry? Any comment on the Ministerial elections?”

“He’s still Snape’s potions apprentice, and you can clear off,” Sirius said, looming from behind Harry, teeth bared.

Rita Skeeter pursed her lips.

“You’ve been studying with Mr. Snape in secret?” she asked, not looking at Sirius.

“It’s not a secret,” Sirius said. “I asked you to leave, Ms. Skeeter.”

“Mr. Black, you are a free man, not guilty of any crimes. You do not intimidate me.”

Sirius laughed darkly.

“That’s funny.”

“Why is that funny, Mr. Black?”

“The idea that me being free makes me less dangerous. It’s funny.”

She left pretty quickly after that. Snape was nowhere to be seen, on whatever set of errands he hadn’t wanted Harry to know about. Sirius didn’t comment on it until after they’d both gotten ice creams. It gave Harry a minute to think.

“Thanks. For distracting her.”

“You’re welcome,” Sirius said quietly. “I probably shouldn’t have done it by trying to remind her I was a convicted mass murderer for a decade or so, I suppose.”

“It’s okay, Sirius.”

“It isn’t.”

“I mean – okay, it’s not that okay. I don’t think you really scared her, though. She doesn’t scare very easily.”

“I might apologize.”

“Okay.”

“Or let her get revenge writing nasty things about me.”

“Sounds more like her, to be honest.”

“It does, doesn’t it. What was Snape up to?”

“Buying books, I suppose.”

“Did you catch the titles?”

Harry thought back. Four books, one of them green, none of the titles visible….

“One of them had a snake on the cover,” Harry concluded.

“That’s never ended badly for anyone,” Sirius said, with deep sarcasm.

Harry couldn’t find a way to disagree.


	17. Interlude: The Dog in the Hedgerow

Harry scrubbed viciously at the largest cauldron.

“ _Aguamenti_!”

It refilled with water, and he resumed scrubbing. Volatile ingredients that needed to avoid too many magical energies, hah.

His hands were turning an interesting shade of lavender in the washwater. Harry gritted his teeth, and went to wash them before he started growing lavender out of his ears or something.

#

The ensuing argument was rather restful, though perhaps not for someone eavesdropping from the nearby hedgerow.

“Explicit instructions-“ came part of a bellow.

“Didn’t explain-“

“Insolence-“

“What do you even keep me around for, then!” was yelled as Harry slammed the door behind him, stomping off on some errand that would remain a mystery to our theoretical hedgerow occupant, should he exist.

Snape came to the door, to watch his apprentice storm down the street, and glanced around.

“Get off my property, Black, unless you wish to make yourself useful.”

The dog in the hedgerow’s ears flattened, then one raised in inquiry. The dog whined.

Snape smiled at him.

“Catch me a garden snake, if you would, you filthy, disgusting cur.”

Catching garden snakes was fun.

Snape scowled down at him along his huge nose.

“ _Alive_.”

The dog was unmoved by the snake’s plight. Either of them. He barked amiably.

“Tell me, Black, what would Harry think of you lurking ever-so-protectively?”

Padfoot wagged his tail. He liked Harry.

“One snake, alive and uninjured,” Snape said, because Snape liked to hear himself talk. “Well? Go!”

Padfoot ambled away. There had been more snakes in the tall grass by the road. He would fetch them. He would bring them to his new friend.

He was looking forward to Snape’s face when Snape realized they were friends now.

(And part of him was hoping for ear scratches, or maybe a bone.)

#

He caught the snake. The snake was his now.

“Give it,” Snape ordered.

Padfoot was unmoved.

“I could take it from your still-warm corpse, but Harry would probably notice,” Snape said under his breath. Padfoot thought Snape did not understand that his hearing was good.

Or perhaps Snape was just rude.

Ignorant _and_ rude. Obviously.

Padfoot attempted to bark around his mouthful of snake. The snake continued to attempt to both flee for its life and play dead.

“I hate animals,” Snape informed him. “I hate _you_ , more specifically, for reasons beyond counting.”

This seemed like a good reason to leave. He headed for the door.

“Stop, you stupid-“

Padfoot paused, and glanced over his shoulder with his most limpid gaze.

“I could just stun you,” Snape said.

He could _try_. Padfoot rather wanted an opportunity to fight and reassert his dominance. That would be nice.

Not as nice as a bone, probably.

“ _Or_ ,” Snape said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I will trade you the snake for a ham bone.”

 _Yes!_ Being a dog was great. Why had he ever thought being human was a good idea, again?

The trade was made, the snake enclosed in a glass case, and Padfoot and his bone were exiled to the road again.

“If I catch you lurking in my yard again, I shall call the muggle dogcatcher,” Snape said, as Padfoot investigated whether or not his bone still had bits of ham on it. It did! He probably shouldn’t take food from Snape, honestly, but it was all part of his master plan to be friends now.

“We are not _friends_ ,” Snape exclaimed, in exactly the tone Snape used when you deliberately spilled ink on his notes. That was funny. (That wasn’t funny, of course. Sirius was mature now. Extremely, extremely mature.)

Oh, right, occlumency. Padfoot closed his mind, and the rest of the inner workings of the animagus shall have to remain a mystery.  


	18. Another Project Looms

The sitting room and its walls of books had been in some disarray since the fight had left the furniture broken and the walls destroyed. Oh, everything had been repaired, but then Minnie had been upset and meals had had to be made and potions checked on and arguments argued and all the different parts of daily life cramming too many people and careers into what was, fundamentally, not a large house.

So it was with some startlement that Harry got back from his trip to the shops  to find the place transformed, with one wall entirely replaced with a row of glass cases as if from a zoo, complete with little plants, water dishes. Professor Snape was consulting a book with a green cover with a snake design in one hand, cradling Minnie in the other, and peering through the glass at a coiled brown snake, about a foot long.

“Ah, Potter. Good. I’m running out of hands.”

“What’s this, sir?”

“A juvenile grass snake, _natrix natrix_ , unless I miss my guess entirely. The brown scales and distinctive yellow markings just behind the head, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“No? I understood that you spoke parseltongue quite ably.”

“It wasn’t my talent. Sir.”

“Take every advantage, Potter. Take every advantage.”

That had almost been an attempt at advice. Snape really _was_ distracted. Harry took Minnie, and she chattered at him, half-syllables and nearly-words. He smiled at her.

Snape had been reading, in the meantime.

“It says here that it most likely eats frogs. Ask it if it would like one, would you?”

“Er.”

“Don’t take all day, Potter.”

Harry’s gaze slid across the glass and fixed on a branch set up halfway up the glass enclosure. He bet a snake would like that. Was a glass case a few feet long and a little over a foot deep big enough for a snake? Why was there a snake? Why was there more than one _case_ for a snake?

This could only end well.

“Would you like a frog?” he asked the branch.

Snape sighed.

“I _said_ I couldn’t speak it anymore. _He_ did that.”

“You taught Weasley to speak a few words during the war.”

“Just in case he – they – wanted to get into the Chamber without me. “

“Do you remember what you taught him?”

“Er. Why?”

“I intend to learn parseltongue.”

“…is that even possible, sir?”

“If Dumbledore could learn Mermish and all the other jibberish he mastered, I can learn this. It is a magical language, but there have been records of it being learned, not born ingrained.”

“…in those books on famous evil wizards you had me borrow from the Malfoys?”

“As it happens, yes.”

“You really think you should be mucking about with dark talents, sir?”

“I hardly think communing with a creature whose greatest offense against nature is the consumption of frogs counts as a dark talent, Potter. Now, if I have quite satisfied your curiosity, how did you open the Chamber?”

Harry thought the word to himself, and said, “Open.”

“English. Again.”

He closed his eyes, and tried to remember the sound. A hiss, falling….

“SSSss,” he tried, but it sounded flat and fake to his ear, with no meaning, just noise. He shook his head. “No, sorry. I don’t know.”

“Your previous mastery of the language is a starting point. Not to worry. This is hardly the most complex problem we have ever faced. Now, give me Minnie. You need to go fetch frogs for our new houseguest.”

Harry handed the baby over, to the baby’s protest. She whistled at him.

“Sir, are you sure-“

“This is not optional, idiot.”

“Right…. Where do I find frogs, then?”

“Down by the river. Perhaps not up to your normal level of danger, but I’m sure that if you try, you can manage to fall in and half drown yourself.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

Snape’s silence was eloquent.

Harry caught frogs squashing around in the stinking mud at the river's edge, and only barely fell in at all. 

#

Snape’s plan was simple enough, in its way, but added another set of tasks to days already filled to the brim with tasks. Memories of snake sounds and body language were recorded by penseive, analyzed, and transcribed. The grass snake was joined two days later by an adder, a corn snake acquired on a trip to London, and a more exotic Boa from South America.

“Shouldn’t you be categorizing those differently?” Harry asked, looking at the tiny crystal vials of feeding time sounds from the Boa being slotted in next to the rest.

“Why, pray?”

“He – she? – probably speaks a different dialect. I met a Boa once from Brazil. He had a funny accent.”

“Parseltongue has dialects.”

“If it was easy, everyone would learn it. Sir, why are you learning parseltongue?”

“Why do you think?”

“I don’t _know_. Slytherin pride? Do you just really miss Voldemort or something?”

Snape went still, fingers going white around his wand. The office suddenly felt very small.

“It’s as good an explanation as any,” Snape murmured.

“Well I don’t miss him,” Harry said savagely. “You can manage without me for the rest of the afternoon, can’t you?”

“Of course.”

Of course.

“I’m going out.”

Someplace that wasn’t more and more full of snakes every day, when Harry just wanted to think about potions and not have to think about the war. Snakes. Nagini, her fangs in Snape’s neck. The basilisk.

It wasn’t like Harry _liked_ snakes.

He apparated, not even sure of his destination, eyes burning, cheeks wet.


	19. Healing Scars

“Harry, dear, what’s wrong?”

Harry found himself enveloped in a large, Mrs. Weasley hug, and hugged her back. He was at the Burrow, then. Good.

“Come in and I’ll make us a cup of tea,” she said, and Harry came in and sat at the kitchen table and watched her make a cup of tea. It was always so warm here.

“Nothing’s really wrong. I’m just – tired.”

“Apprenticeship keeping you busy?”

“A bit.”

There was peace, as the kettle danced itself into through the motions of teatime and Mrs. Weasley chattered on about how everyone was.

“And Ginny’s gone out flying today,” she said, and Harry drew his attention back from contemplating flying teaspoons.

“I actually came to see her.”

“Oh. Well, you can go out and see her in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, after you tell me what’s wrong.”

The maternal firmness was both pleasant and made him want to hide. He wrapped his hands around his teacup and sipped his tea, buying time.

“Do you think everyone’s having trouble remembering the war’s over?”

“Oh, yes. Harry, _thank you_.”

“Er. What?”

“We shouldn’t have asked you to fix everything. You were too young. Oh, I was terrified, just terrified.”

Harry patted her hand and did his best not to look alarmed. In preemptive defense of another hug, he had some more tea.

“I lost my brothers during the first war, you know. I’d not been involved, and I was left feeling so very angry that I hadn’t done anything, really, even though I had my little boys at home and couldn’t really….”

“It’s alright, Mrs. Weasley, I mean… it’s not alright.”

“Call me Molly, dear. Then this war and I still ended up… someone else ended up doing the main part. My point is… my point is, anything I can do, we can. Anything at all.”

Harry smiled at her.

“Just directions to Ginny today… and maybe some baby clothes and things? For Minnie, I mean. She’s growing.”

Molly’s cheer reappeared as if from behind a cloud, and she nodded firmly.

“I still have all of Ginny’s things tucked away in the attic, I’ll go get them. Ginny’s down the hill, you know the way.”

“Ta.”

Harry finished his tea, and went out. It had started drizzling, but that was alright. Life wasn’t too bad.

#

Harry and Ginny sat on separate branches of a tremendous, gnarled old oak tree, the leaves keeping the rain off of them, as it poured down around them. There were raindrops glittering in her long red hair. Harry tried to remember what he’d meant to say, if he’d ever known.

“Harry?”

“Too bad about the rain.”

“Oh, the garden needs it, and it isn’t as if we’re soaked. I do wish I could apparate. We could side-along?”

“No. No, I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve got years of apprenticeship left.”

“I know.”

“It’s a long time.”

“Harry Potter, do get to the point.”

He laughed, and smiled at her fierce expression.

“Right. Well. Er.” There was no good way to say this. Should he even say it? “I only ever seem to talk to you when I want to talk about Voldemort. I’m sorry.”

“…you should be. Ron says you haven’t been talking to him much, either. We’re your friends, Harry.”

“I know. I just get wrapped up in what I’m doing, that’s all. How’s your summer been?”

“Good. Strange not having anyone else in the house, though, mum and dad and I are rattling around. The ghoul is quite upset.”

“That sounds – loud.”

“Very. You should come over and help me practice for the team.”

“Whenever I can get away. There’s so much to do.”

“Mum says it’s just like men not to ask for help when you need it.”

“Ron said she’d come close to storming the battlements a few times.”

“She would, too, if Professor Snape weren’t so touchy. He doesn’t seem like he’d do very well with a baby, really.”

“I bet he was awful at first, but he’s been figuring it out. Except for the part where anyone gets any sleep. We haven’t really figured that out at all.”

“Well, sort it out, Harry.”

He laughed again.

“You’re a hero. You fix things.”

She looked so very sure, as if it was just that simple.

“I’m not the only one who fought in the war. You did your bit, too.”

“Of course. I had to.”

Clarity of purpose, that was it. She had it. He wanted it. He wanted….

“We don’t have to talk about Voldemort,” he said.

“Oh? I’d just about got my nerve up for it.”

“He’s dead. He can just be dead. It doesn’t matter what he was like, really, or what knowing him was like. He’s dead.”

“He is.”

The rain made a misty halo as it drummed on the leaves overhead, enclosing them in a protective bowl of water. The sun made the mist glow golden.

“He was an arsehole,” Harry added.

They both laughed.


	20. Sleep Deprivation

Harry went back to his apprenticeship laden down with boxes of baby things and a large shepherd's pie, suitable for dinner. There was some conversation on the subject of pies, and how they were eternally wonderful even in the face of stubborn men and bad memories.

Harry put his things away, and checked on the baby. She was asleep in her crib, and Snape was standing over it, watching her. With his pale face and dark, glittering eyes, he was looking particularly vampiric today.

Harry met his gaze, felt the feather-light brush of occlumency against the borders of his mind.

 _Downstairs?_ Harry thought/pictured, projecting it past his walls of fire into the shadowy place beyond, and Snape nodded faintly.

Downstairs they went, doors closing silently behind them, and Harry led the way through the room full of snakes and books into the kitchen, which was still the same as it had been when Harry had started this job, how many weeks ago?

Not that many. It felt like longer.

“You have not returned to quit,” Snape observed. “If you were that easily swayed from your purpose, I would have been rid of you years ago.”

Harry nodded.

“I’d miss Minny, anyway,” he said.

“Would you.”

“Why is it so hard for you to think I might _like_ her?”

“I have never had very much luck predicting you, Potter.”

Harry smoothed his expression, even under the weight of Snape’s glower. It wouldn’t do any good to laugh, or to smile.

“So, what now?”

“Now, we continue our work. That’s enough histrionics, wouldn’t you say?”

“You could just tell me what was going on.”

Snape studied him through half-lidded eyes.

“We are engaged in the study of potions and parseltongue, and we are caring for Minerva Delphi, because those are the necessary tasks set before us.”

Harry stuck his hands into his pockets.

“Necessary?”

“Yes, idiot.”

“Oh. That’s alright, then.”

Snape’s eyebrows twitched up.

“I’m not _lazy_ , sir. I just like to think I’m not wasting my time.”

“I promise you are not wasting your time.”

“Right, then. I brought dinner, so what’s next?”

“Review my notes on the phonemes identified so far and add your comments, then when the moon rises the main cauldron will need three measures of powdered aconite. You remember the wand motions?”

“I’ve got them, sir,” Harry confirmed.

Snape’s expression, #7, was the frustrated wish to find something amiss to criticize and being thwarted by good work on the behalf of the unlucky recipient of the glare. It was Harry’s favorite of his expressions.

#

Sleep deprivation had strange effects on how you perceived time. It seemed very much like Harry had started his apprenticeship earlier this same week, and at the same time it seemed like he’d been staying up late into the night studying ingredient interactions and correspondences forever.

It wasn’t that Minny Dee didn’t sleep through the night, exactly. She was a delightful child when she got the attention she wanted, but being left alone was still a problem for her (and for Snape, and for Harry by extension). Harry wasn’t sure whose nightmares and anxieties were feeding on whose, but it didn’t matter in the end. No one was sleeping well, between the pace of their work and the need for them to be in three places at once, especially since the snakes needed care as well.

Breaking down parseltongue into movements and pieces of sound was distantly interesting, though it was more Hermione’s sort of thing than Harry’s, fundamentally. It made him restless not to be moving at all, just sitting over a desk fiddling with the difference between SS, Sss, and sss. Not to mention the possibilities of body language as part of parseltongue, which made him want to set the workshop on fire and go flying.

Now, the thing about Harry Potter was that he wasn’t a very passive person. He came at his problems sideways, but he did come at them, one way or another. So it didn’t take very long before he found himself closing the little round window behind Hedwig, winging her way off to hunt and deliver his two-line letters (mostly assurances he wasn’t dead and hadn’t murdered his potion’s master).

His glasses were damp. It had been mizzling all day, and the dampness crept into everything, and the whole situation was just… silly.

Ridiculous, really. When had he ever waited for Snape to figure out the solution to a problem. He believed the man that there was a problem, secret though it might be. That just meant Harry had to fix it.

He cleaned his glasses on his shirt, got out his pocket mirror, lay down on his bed, and called, “Sirius?”

Sirius appeared in the little mirror, as if from far away.

“Harry! About time you called again.”

“Er. I was actually calling for Kreacher?”

“… _why_.”

“I thought maybe he’d like some work? Please, Sirius?”

“I’m not at the house, but I’ll tell him to pop over. Which you could do.”

“I’ve got an apprenticeship to do.”

And Snape and the baby to look after.

“Used any of those things I got you?”

“Actually, Minny Dee likes the fake wands that shoot fireworks.”

Sirius made a soft, low sound of satisfaction.

“Bet Snape loves that.”

“He really doesn’t.”

Harry knew his tone was even, but Sirius laughed at him anyway. The conversation after that was lighter, and Harry felt lighter. He had a plan.

#

Everything went very well for about six hours. (Harry really should have known better, in retrospect. His life was never going to be simple.)

Kreacher was agreeable, saying, “Kreacher would be happy to care for the little mistress. She has a very good nose, so she does.”

Snape, informed that Harry had a house elf friend who would come help out, just nodded and continued peeling anise root, and asked Harry to catch him some fieldmice. Harry resisted the urge to tell him he wasn’t Draco, and went to do as he was bid.

It was only half an hour later, when Harry had come in out of the rain to toss mice in the general direction of the snakes on his way upstairs, tromped up the stairs that Minny Dee had fallen down the previous night (and hadn't that been an adventure in testing safety charms), and poked his head back into the potion's lab, that Snape focused.

“ _Who_ did you say you had watching Minerva?”  


	21. Snape Breaks a Lamp

Snape turned the flame down underneath the bubbling cauldron.

“He’s the Black family house elf, so I’m sure he’s dealt with lots of babies before,” Harry said.

“What did you just say?”

“He’s dealt with lots of babies before.”

“The _other_ part.”

“He’s the Black family house elf. His name’s Kreacher. I’ve talked about him before, he likes to disapprove of me.”

“Where is he right now?”

“Watching Minny Dee. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

Snape swept past Harry, and Harry followed. Together, they went looking for Kreacher, and found him fussing around Minny, putting away scattered toys and singing a croaking song about frogs to her evident hand-clapping delight. Snape closed the bedroom door softly.

“Make lunch,” Snape said, and went back to his workroom.

Well, that was good, wasn’t it? Harry didn’t like that chilly tone, but Snape hadn’t done anything.

#

Things fell apart once Minny was down for her nap.

Harry, caring for snakes, said a distracted hello to Kreacher when Kreacher’s cleaning spree reached the sitting room. Kreacher’s internal-external monologue hadn’t really changed much in the years Harry had known him, so Harry was treated to Kreacher’s opinions on the furniture (cheap), the snakes (why are those there, Kreacher wonders), and Harry’s hair (awful).

Harry smoothed his hair, but that was still, inevitably, a lost cause.

Snape came in from the kitchen, and Harry paused to wave. Kreacher did not look up at Snape as he dusted the lamp on the side table.

“This is the father, then? This half-breed scum? Not what Kreacher would have expected, no, not at all, not from-“

Harry caught the look in Snape’s eyes a moment before Snape moved.

“DUCK,” Harry bellowed, even as the acid-green spell sped through the space where Kreacher had been moments before.

Harry drew his _other_ wand, letting it leap into his hand as it always wanted to do. He leveled it at Professor Snape even as Professor Snape spun to face him, expression a murderous snarl.

“EXPELLIARMUS,” Harry bellowed, and the force of his spell threw Snape back into the bookshelf, hitting his head with a horrible thud of skull against wood.

Kreacher cowered in the corner by the broken lamp. Harry took a careful, careful breath, and considered the scattered books, the slumped, unconscious form of his teacher, the third wand in his hand. He was not going to start a collection.

“Kreacher. Clean this mess up.”

Kreacher stood, giving Harry a sidelong, sly look, and obeyed. At least the order calmed his trembling.

“I’ll handle it,” Harry promised. “He won’t – I’m sorry, Kreacher.”

“Young Harry was almost doing well,” Kreacher told thin air, “Until he started saying he was sorry.”

Harry sighed, and went to apply healing potions to his teacher’s bleeding skull, where he’d caught it on the bookcase.

Snape woke up while Harry was applying the topical healing potion on a handkerchief, and didn’t move.

“We are going to find an alternate solution to murder, sir,” Harry said, keeping his concentration on the headwound and his other hand steady, where his wand pressed against his teacher’s throat.

Death for all, and all to die in their time, but not today, for Kreacher. Harry couldn’t stop seeing that acid green light, so like the light that had killed Dumbledore that black night. He had thought he wouldn’t have to see that light again.

“You will not tell me what to do, boy,” Snape whispered.

“No. I’ll stop you.”

They stared at each other for long, frozen seconds. Then, from upstairs, they heard Minerva begin to wail. Snape closed his eyes for just a moment, and for that moment he looked dreadfully, horribly tired.

Harry would take an opportunity when he saw one.

“Sir, if you’re worried about Kreacher, you mustn’t be worried. He’d never hurt her, really he wouldn’t.”

That did not appear to help.

“And if you want him to not say something, he won’t. I can give him orders. If he was being insulting-“

“He will not speak of me, or of Minerva Delphi. To you, to anyone. Not ever.”

“Kreacher, obey that,” Harry said immediately.

“Kreacher obeys,” Kreacher muttered. “But Kreacher does not understand, but Kreacher does not have to understand, Kreacher must simply obey any mongrel found in the street. Not any _specific_ mongrel, of course.”

Snape’s expression was dark and thunderous. Harry finished applying the potion, and sat back on his heels.

Snape looked at the wand in Harry’s hand, and met Harry’s eyes. No thoughts passed between them, but something shifted in Snape’s dark gaze.

“Potter. Go see to Minerva. Kreacher. I will explain.”

“…you’re explaining to _him_?” Harry protested.

“Go.”

“If you hurt him-“

“I will not.”

Harry stomped upstairs, thinking angry, thunderous thoughts of his own about teachers who thought murder was the first solution to any problem and babies that wouldn’t stop screaming and why was Professor Snape trying to kill Kreacher _anyway_ and why would Professor Snape explain to _Kreacher_ and not to Harry. Why.

#

When Harry came downstairs carrying a clingy baby girl, Kreacher was putting a tray of tea on the table, and was singing a song about frogs again. Snape was sitting in his battered armchair, looking blankly into the distance. Harry sat down on the couch, and contented himself with chattering at Minny Dee.

“Snake,” she observed, looking at the baby boa constrictor’s cage. Harry flickered a glance at the cage, then at Minny Dee.

“That’s right, Minny. Snake. Can you say dada?”

She blew a bubble at him.

“I don’t know why she was crying,” Harry observed. “She’s fine now.”

“It’s possible she has a sensitivity to dark magic,” said Snape.

“Speaking of,” Harry said, keeping his tone light, friendly, and baby-appropriate, “I’m about out of patience, sir.”

Snape met Harry’s eyes, glanced at the elder wand held in Harry’s free hand, and back up at Harry.

“I can tell.”  

“Well?”

“I didn’t know you’d kept that.”

“The war wasn’t over. Sometimes feels like it still isn’t.”

“Do you still have the ring?”

“Not important right now.”

“Whether or not you have collected some of the most powerful artifacts in the world isn’t _important_?”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

“Whether or not you are the-“

“I said STOP,” and the conversation was interrupted by Minny Dee’s crying, and Kreacher’s fussing, and then the tea had to be poured (black tea with raspberry leaves, perfectly prepared), and then Minny had to be put down for her nap, and the potions in the lab had to be tended, and there were still more old books about snakes to pour over.

Harry left Snape’s wand on the lab counter, and it was gone when he turned around again.

They _would_ finish that conversation. Just not the one about whether or not Harry was the master of death.


	22. Relevant Details

Harry rubbed at his itchy eyes, sharpened his quill, and bent back to his scribing.

_Dear Hermione,_

_Thanks for the list of dead and missing from the war. I didn’t realize so many people were still missing. Do you think they’re hiding, like Professor Slughorn? I’ll look into it._

_Things are quieter here. Professor Snape and Kreacher are getting along. Minny Dee is sleeping better. I’ve included the latest notes on parseltongue. Kreacher brought a couple of my cleaning potions over and set them loose, so everything’s very sparkly._

_About Kingsley, I didn’t mean I didn’t want him to win! I’m just not sure I’m the right person to say that. The prophecy’s over now, I’m not- you know what I mean._

_I thought I’d get more sleep once Minny Dee stopped distracting us every other minute, but there’s just always more to do. No, I don’t want to see a healer about it. Don’t worry about me, alright? I’m not just shut in reading potions books and hunched over a cauldron, I’m running around on errands and I go flying most nights after the sun’s down and I won’t get in trouble with the Ministry. (Yes, I’m Disillusioned!)_

_There’s one other side effect of having Kreacher around helping – time off! I can meet up with you and Ron in London or Hogsmeade, just let me know where and when. (Bring anyone you like.) I can work around the Ministry, and my latest truce with Snape means I mostly come and go as I please. Ask Ron, I’ve told him about it._

_Love,_

_Harry_

Just one letter left, in Draco’s elegant copperplate. Harry _could_ leave it – but he’d been doing that too often, and there was still a hint of sun in the sky. He cracked the wax seal and began the process of deciphering Draco’s handwriting.

_Dear Harry,_

_It is entirely unreasonable that you are still angry with me. This silence is most unbecoming and childish…._

Blah, blah, blah, half a page of whining….

_You are entirely lucky that mother has taken an interest in that house elf of yours, otherwise I should not have any word of you at all and would have to assume you’d finally gotten yourself killed. He says you have been studying parseltongue and flying and making potions instead of sleeping, which sounds exactly like you. You can stop living as if you’re going to die young, you know. Assuming you don’t let yourself get poisoned, you’re going to be annoying me when we’re both Dumbledore’s age._

_I await your apology with bated breath._

_Yours,_

_Draco_

_PS.Thank you for the chocolates, which I have not yet tried. What did you do to them?_

So, Kreacher was going around telling Narcissa and Draco Malfoy that Harry was speaking parseltongue, an obvious loophole in an order to not discuss Snape or Minerva Delphi. Harry refolded the letter, carefully. He couldn’t help a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he couldn’t pin down _why_.

Narcissa Malfoy shouldn’t be this interested in what Harry was up to, or what Snape was up to. _Kreacher_ shouldn’t be so happy about digging baby things out of the Black attic and conspiring with Snape about proper pureblood child-rearing traditions. Kreacher was many things, but he wasn’t happy.

It felt like getting a puzzle with half the pieces missing, and being able to see the empty space. He didn’t _like_ the shape of that empty space, because it was a dead woman who’d known Snape and died as the spell on his memories broke and who Kreacher had called Miss Bella.

Harry was really, truly, not ready to be half in love with Bellatrix LeStrange’s daughter, and that didn’t even _cover_ trying to imagine how she and Snape… how they… he just couldn’t see it.

His thoughts came slow as golden syrup.

Drip.

He really hoped evil wasn’t genetic. Was being a sadistic psycho genetic?

Drip.

Well, if she was related to Sirius, she couldn’t be _that_ bad.

Drip.

Honestly still didn’t seem worth casting _avada kedavra_ over.

Drip.

Should he tell Snape he knew? Obviously not.

Drip.

Should he talk to someone else? He wanted to.

Drip.

He hadn’t been sworn to secrecy, but he would have been if Snape knew he knew.

Drip.

He’d told Ron and Hermione secrets far darker than this one. He wasn’t going to stop trusting them to keep secrets _now_. Thoughts in order, Harry unfolded his letter to Hermione, scribbling over the invitation to make their outing a group.

_PS. I figured something out. Meet soonest._

One more letter.

_Draco,_

_Can you find out what your mum wants? I don’t need her chatting up Kreacher to keep an eye on me. Is your dad involved?_

_You probably don’t know the answer to that._

_Too much going on. I’m not angry, Draco, I’m tired. I’ve not been poisoned, either, Snape’s too busy trying to make me ‘engage’ with the snakes. Apparently admitting I don’t like them means I have to get over my irrationality._

_We’ve been doing some interesting things with fresh snake scales trying out how varying the species varies the effects._

_Harry_

_PS.The chocolates are completely safe for humans. Enjoy._

Harry was smiling as he handed the letters over to Hedwig to deliver.

#

Replies arrived by owl post the next day, and Harry opened them at lunchtime.

_Dear Harry,_

_Ron and I can come to Grimmauld Place tonight. It has the most privacy._

_Hermione Granger_

_Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures_

And from Draco,

 _THAT WAS NOT SAFE FOR HUMANS_.

Harry took a drink of his pumpkin juice, and told Snape, “The catnip solution worked, if you want me to make something for Professor McGonagall.”

“Hmm. I believe I owe her a bottle of firewhiskey, for her assistance.”

“Is that a good idea, mixing the two?”

“Almost certainly not.”

“Doesn’t seem like we should do it, then.”

“You are forgetting a relevant detail, as usual.”

“What’s that, then?”

Snape shot a pointed glance at Minerva and her new favorite toy, an enchanted hand drum. Harry winced as it made a particularly loud contribution to the conversation, and nodded. It was, indeed, a relevant detail.


	23. ...Who Needs Enemies

Harry had figured out the trick to dealing with the snakes. He just had to not think about it, or look at them, and everything was fine. So he was settled comfortably in the sitting room, ignoring the snakes, while Minny Dee scooted around the floor in a toy broomstick and Harry read about the development of Wolfsbane, which had been the result of a gruesome series of experiments. He wanted to punch the man who’d made it, and then shake his hand and thank him. It was a complicated sort of feeling.

There was a knock on the door, and Harry grabbed his wand.

It was probably just the mailman. This was a muggle neighborhood, he was being ridiculous.

Harry put his wand away, got the door, and stared.

Lucius Malfoy was wearing a grey muggle suit, tie crisp and silver-headed cane in hand, and Narcissa Malfoy was wearing an olive-green dress patterned in snake scales.

She smiled, lips very red, and said, “Harry, may we come in? I’m so sorry to drop by unannounced, but you don’t mind, do you?”

Harry had very good reflexes. He was not very good at knowing what to say to perfectly elegant people when you weren’t supposed to hex them because-

He glanced around and down reflexively, and did not swear. He bent down and scooped up Minny Dee before she could make good her escape into the beckoning sunshine, bouncing her on his hip.

“I’m sorry,” he said as she made unhappy noises, “C’mon, Minny, you know you’re not allowed outside. Yes, it is very unfair. It is.”

Minny Dee hit him in the nose. Harry figured he deserved it.

“She’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Malfoy, and Harry was abruptly reminded that if Bellatrix was Minny’s mother, then Mrs. Malfoy was her _aunt_.

“Thanks,” said Harry. “Look, I’ll see if he’s in for visitors. We’re in the middle of a delicate-“

“Experiment?” Mrs. Malfoy interjected smoothly.

“We’re taking it in turns to mind a potion. This week’s fiddly.”

Harry considered whether or not it was rude to leave them standing on the doorstep, and then considered that they were the _Malfoys_ , and slammed the door in their faces. That’d teach him to let his guard down, he supposed.

“Kreacher,” he said, and Kreacher was there in a pop. Of course.

“The boy called?”

“Whatever you’ve been telling Mrs. Malfoy, she’s turned up. So get things together for… tea? Tea. And stop looking for loopholes around what I tell you, will you?”

Harry stomped upstairs, not waiting for a reply. Kreacher could handle them for a few minutes. Minny was a familiar, warm weight in his arms.

“Your family’s awful,” he confided in Minny. “Lucky for you, I know something about awful aunts and uncles. You could do worse than Draco for a cousin, I suppose.”

She wasn’t thrilled with him, but he didn’t expect her to be. Harry poked his head into the potions lab.

“I need you downstairs.”

“I am _busy_.”

“You want me talking to the Malfoys on your behalf? I didn’t think so.”

“I _can’t_ leave it now.”

“We could leave them down there. Oh, and you still can’t kill anyone.”

Snape vanished the potion with a vicious flick of his wand.

“It is as it is. Both of them, you say?”

“Right. I have Kreacher entertaining them, so we have a minute.”

“I do not need a minute.”

“I’m bringing Minny.”

Snape turned his head just enough to stare at Harry. Harry, who could interpret a look when he got one, handed over the toddler. Snape held her with all the care of a man who was doing his best not to squeeze the life out of her.

“You talk, I look threatening?” Harry offered.

“As if you could.”

Harry raised his chin, and let himself think about facing battle alone. Snape was the one to look away first.  

“Your wand. Choose carefully – neither need the temptation.”

“Right.”

No elder wand here, since he wasn’t willing to kill with it.

“Come.”

Snape led the way downstairs, Minny clinging quietly in his arms. She was either sleepy or sensing their alarm. It was hard to tell, and life had too many moving pieces. Sometimes Harry wished it would just stop.

Harry shoved that thought back into its corner where it belonged.

#

Snape drew a curtain over the snake cages, and settled himself and Minny in his armchair with all the dignity of a man ignoring a toddler pulling his hair. Harry winced. That looked like it hurt. Harry leaned against a bookcase, arms folded, mostly because there were only three seats and everyone else had taken them.

“You look tired, my friend,” said Lucius.

“It has been a busy summer.”

For a few minutes, the conversation consisted of portioning out tea and lemon cake to all assembled, and Minny Dee providing a ready distraction by enjoying trying cake.

“Narcissa is concerned you misunderstood her during your last conversation,” Lucius continued.

“She was perfectly clear,” said Snape.

“Severus, you have to see how it looks,” Lucius said, fingers tapping against his cane. “You have not been well. Should you be taking on so much?”

“You are so much recovered from your stay in Azkaban, then?”

“I have good days and bad, but I have a wife and… other resources.”

Snape leaned back in his chair, the picture of ease.

“I have never been happier, though it is kind of you to be concerned.”

“We are not your enemies, Severus,” Narcissa said, leaning forward. “You do not need to be so defensive.”

“I don’t know what you mean, madam.”

“Your apprentice _did_ poison our son this morning,” Lucius said dryly. “Which had nothing to do with you, naturally.”

“His taste for childish pranks is Black’s influence, and none of my affair.”

Except Snape _had_ suggested testing whether or not catnip had an effect on cat animagi, and it’s not like they had a lot of cat animagi acquaintances.

Harry wasn’t sure what his expression was like, but by the growing anger on Lucius Malfoy’s face, it wasn’t ‘innocent as a lamb.’

Lucius smiled.

“Of course not, my friend. But how have you been, really? I have so few real friends left, these days.”

They continued like that, talking in veiled barbs and political references, falsely cordial, about people Harry had never heard of and points of philosophy Harry didn’t follow, so it took Harry a while to sort out what was going on.

“Do you remember when Draco was little, and he decided he was going to be a farmer?” Lucius asked Narcissa.

She laughed a sparkling laugh.

“Oh, yes. He made the house elves dig him up a field in the rose garden, the silly dear. I planted a number of pumpkins for him in the night, he was ever so proud of himself.”

“That was the year we took him to see the Pyranees, wasn’t it?”

“No, we went to the villa that summer, we weren’t sure he was quite old enough for the mountains.”

“Ah, yes.”

Snape had been quiet for too long, Harry realized. They were making _Harry_ self conscious about money, and he wasn’t even the one….

He wasn’t even the one being challenged for custody of his daughter, because they had money and they were arrogant, horrible people who didn’t care that Snape _loved_ her.

“Remember when Draco-“

“That’s enough,” Harry said.

Mrs. Malfoy gave him her politest, reddest smile.

“That’s enough,” Harry repeated. “It was very nice of you to stop by, and I’m sure we’ll see you again soon sometime.”

He probably could have said that more politely.

He didn’t care.

“Harry, dear,” Mrs. Malfoy tried.

“Tell Draco I’m sorry about that, and I’ll owe him a favor. Now, it’s time for Minerva Delphi’s nap.”

This had the benefit of being true.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Malfoy. “We wouldn’t want to intrude. I’ve always thought Delphini was a lovely constellation, haven’t you, dear?”

“I agree,” said Lucius.

“Right. Bye, then,” said Harry.

It took forever to kick them out, even after that, but it was done in the end. Snape had disappeared upstairs somewhere, and Harry was left alone with his own thoughts about aunts and simmering anger.

He took himself off to the kitchen to take his temper out on another cake, since the Malfoys ate most of his last one.  


	24. In Which Snape Has Time to Think

“This is really good cake, mate,” Ron told him around a mouthful of cake.

Harry nodded.

“And then Mrs. and Mr. Malfoy said they had to get back to their evening plans and offered us box tickets at the Harpies match.”

Ron offered a very rude suggestion about where Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy could shove their box tickets.

“Ron!” objected Hermione, curled up sideways on the couch next to Grimmauld Place’s grand fireplace.

Ron took another slice of cake, and continued, “We could really save a lot of time at work if we could just arrest them for being evil sods. Slytherins, I mean.”

“You don’t really mean that,” said Harry.

“Course I do. They’re all the same, aren’t they? Even the ones on our side are slimy gits about it. Look at Malfoy.”

Ron, the recipient of two matching best friend glares, wilted slightly.

“It’s just the job, alright? You finally track down Death Eaters in hiding and they’re all ‘oh, it wasn’t me, guv, it was that other bloke that tortured them.’ Who do they think they’re fooling.”

“I thought you were enjoying auror training,” said Harry.

“It’s not bad. I just don’t think I’m much good at it.”

The only person who thought Ron wasn’t worth anything was Ron, but Ron _was_ hard to talk out of an idea once he got it into his head. Harry should have been spending more time doing that. He was guilty of being too busy, and not being a good best mate. He could fix that now.

“That’s too bad,” Harry said, “Because I need your help figuring out how to deal with this list Hermione got for me.”

He summoned it from the depths of his right pocket, and spread the thick parchment sheets out on the table in between the plates of cake and mugs of cocoa.

“It’s all the people missing since the start of the war,” Harry continued. “There’s lots of muggleborns, some purebloods, and it’s basically a mess. Some of them must have gone into hiding or fled the country, but some of them are probably… I don’t know. Transfigured and buried in a ditch somewhere. How’re we supposed to know?”

“Ask the Death Eaters,” Ron said, cake forgotten.

“Oh, Ron, of course!” cried Hermione. “I should have thought of that.”

“Snape, the Malfoys,” Ron listed off on his fingers, “And then in Azkaban you’ve got Greyback, the Carrows, LeStrange, whatshisname….”

“LeStrange?” Harry asked, throat dry.

“Sure, they finally caught him last month.”

“He was married to Bellatrix, right?”

“From what I hear they deserved each other,” Ron said, nodding. “Crazy, the both of them.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, thoughts racing, “I think I should talk to them about what went on last year.”

“I recognize a few of these names,” Ron added, “I helped some of them get across the Channel. Hand me that quill?”

Harry handed him the quill, and the evening turned into lists and planning and strategy, speculation and joking, just like a hundred other warm evenings in the Gryffindor commonroom. Harry had missed this, and he hadn’t even realized how much.

“Was there something you wanted to talk about, Harry?” Hermione asked, as the clock chimed far too late for a weeknight and everyone gathered their papers and stray umbrellas. Ron cleared the table of plates and raspberry cake crumbs.

“Oh, just some stuff about Snape and what he’s been being so mysterious about.”

“I think it makes sense that he’d be mysterious, under the circumstances,” said Hermione.

“Er.” Harry glanced at Ron, and thought about ‘they should all be locked up.’ “Yeah.”

Hermione patted his arm.

“I know it must be hard, but you’re holding up tremendously well. You’ll let me know if you need any help with the interviews?”

“I will, but I know you’re busy trying to rehome Dementors.”

“It’s hardly _their_ fault they have unusual eating habits,” she said primly. “People are so prejudiced.”

Harry laughed.

“They really are.”

#

It was too late at night to visit a prison, and Harry needed permits anyway, so he popped back to the grubby strip of grass by the dingy river and hiked his way back to Snape’s narrow house, yawning.

He was greeted at the door by Snape, disarming wards.

“Evening,” Harry greeted.

“Try that one more time, if you would.”

Harry thought about this, thoughts foggy and comfortable with exhaustion.

“Good evening, sir?”

“Better, Mr. Potter. I have something for you, if you’ll come through to the kitchen.”

Harry followed him through to the kitchen, feeling amiable and worried at the same time. Being tired was a strange sensation.

Snape handed him a glass full of a purple liquid. Harry held it up to the light, tilted it to catch the violet highlights.

“Dreamless Sleep, sir?”

“That’s right. I shall be taking a dose as well, myself. I had hoped we could have a period uninterrupted to let our minds settle naturally, but if we are going to have days like today, we do need to be rested for them.”

Harry could see it. There was a certain luxury is taking time to fall apart. He’d rather been enjoying it, actually. He sighed.

“You have a choice,” Snape murmured. “If you wish to continue as you have been….”

Harry shook his head.

“No, I’d like to sleep. Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Mr. Potter.”

Things would get back to normal, now, Harry supposed. Sleep drowned him in violets, and he forgot whatever he’d been about to think.


	25. Harry Practices Logic

Perhaps it was having gotten a bit of sleep that did it, but Harry actually considered the date while making eggs and bacon the next morning.

“It’s almost September, sir.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Have you thought about Hogwarts?”

“The post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher remains open to me, should I wish to take it up.”

“…that’s an awful idea.”

“Why.”

“Because you love it too much, sir. You love it the way I love potions.” What was a good argument. “That would distract you from Minny.”

“The day I introduced you to Minerva and her unfortunate choices of nickname was a very foolish day of mine.”

“Yes, sir, but still-“

“Stop.”

Harry flipped the eggs and bacon.

“I am not returning to Hogwarts,” Snape said. “It is a public position, and I do not wish my every private moment dissected by the student body and their parents.”

Harry took this to mean he didn’t want anyone paying attention to Minny.

“I’m glad you’re not listening to the Malfoys.”

“Idiot. Did you think I would?”

Harry served up plates of eggs and toast and bacon, and poured the tea. Snape handed him part of the paper, then took up the task of feeding Minny.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking it through.”

“If you learn nothing else during this apprenticeship, I should like it very much if you learned a modicum of logic.”

Harry remembered a logic puzzle, now seven years old.

“So, I’m doing some research about the war,” Harry said, to change the subject, “I’m going to need to take some time to travel and interview people.”

“Oh?”

“Former Death Eaters, about who they killed and who’s just missing.”

“I see.”

“I don’t really know when it’ll be.”

“When I say you may, Potter.”

Harry ate some bacon.

“Unless you wish to find a different apprenticeship, with fewer calls upon your time.”

“No. No, that’s fine. I don’t mind working here.”

“I should hope not, or I really would fear for your sanity,” Snape said with profound dryness.

“My sanity’s fine.”

“Mm. Today we will be working on healing potions.”

“Good.”

“Wolfsbane is not so easily assembled that we may try again without ingredients.”

“I didn’t say we should start again.”

“It’s not feasible.”

“I wasn’t _arguing_.”

Snape distracted himself with talking to Minerva Delphi, and Harry ate toast savagely. Being well rested did not make living with Snape that much easier.

“I could help buy things,” Harry tried.

“No.”

“The joke shop stuff’s selling, and Fred and George got me that contract with St Mungos going-“

“I said no, Potter.”

“But I could-“

He fell silent at Snape’s dour glare. Maybe he’d just sneak replacements into the ingredients cupboard. That’d serve Snape right.

“I am hardly destitute. You do not need to worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Harry lied.

That got exactly as much silent mockery as it deserved, to be honest.  

#

Harry’s hands were bleeding. This was a natural offshoot of his afternoon task, scrubbing out all their various cauldrons with volcanic sand and seawater, because a lot of complicated ways to say that fire and water were good ways to clean stuff.

The salt got into the abrasions and stung. Honestly, Harry had thought when Aunt Petunia died he’d never have to scrub anything until he bled again.

He’d definitely never thought he’d do it _voluntarily_.

“Harry?”

Harry glanced up, to find Percy Weasley standing uneasily on the cracked sidewalk in front of Snape’s house, hair combed neatly.

Harry, on the other hand, was all over sand and dried salt, wearing old muggle jeans and a t-shirt. He didn’t know what his hair looked like, but neat it was not.

“Hullo, Percy. What’s going on?”

“Well. I volunteered.”

“To?”

“You need an escort. To Azkaban. Are you alright, Harry?”

“Fine.”

Harry considered his potential audience in Azkaban.

“Let me grab a robe and I’ll be ready to go. And, er, wash up.”

“Your hands….”

“Oh. Er. I got a little overenthusiastic.”

Percy blinked owlishly at him.

“I’ll be ready in a mo.”

Harry darted inside, and did not invite Percy in.

#

Explaining to Percy the key points of avoiding potion cross-contamination when you worked with a lot of different potions in a confined space occupied most of the trip out to Azkaban by boat, and kept Harry from thinking too hard about where he was going, what had happened last time he was there, and the way Percy stirred uneasily whenever any Death Eater was mentioned.

Harry wished he’d brought basically anyone but Percy. Draco, preferably, since Draco was an animagus, or Sirius if Sirius hadn’t had to go to South America to do things for his job.

And then there was Rodolphus LeStrange, hiding in the shadows of his cell, and Harry sent Percy away.

“Hullo.”

This got no response.

“I’ve got a few questions for you, about your victims.”

“I have nothing to say to you, Harry Potter.”

“Too bad. I’ve got things to ask you, and you’re not going anywhere.”

“You think you scare me?”

“No. I do think you don’t get much news in here, do you? I bet you wonder what’s going on out there.”

LeStrange had no response to this, either. Harry read the first name on his list, and watched LeStrange for reactions.

It was a long interview.

Eventually, LeStrange said, “Ask what you really came here to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“You know.”

“I don’t,” Harry said with perfect honesty. “I think you want to ask me something, though.”

“I saw in the paper you live with Severus, now.”

“That’s right.”

“You think he’s redeemed? He always did have a knack for coming one step short of repentance.”

“You were in school together, weren’t you?”

“Best of mates,” came the whisper from the shadows.

“Oh.”

That was hard to imagine.

“You can give him a message for me.”

“What message?”

“I’m not going to be in here forever. He’d best remember that.”

“And, er, what would you do, when you’re not in there?”

“He knows.”

“His memory’s been a little spotty, lately. You might want to remind him.”

That got a short bark of laughter. Harry, who knew he wasn’t the best liar, didn’t change his stance or expression.

“I don’t know what his real story is. I don’t care. She has a destiny, and he doesn’t matter compared to that.”

Something inside Harry froze.

“I’ll tell him,” he said, numb, and got out of there without seeming like he was running.

Logic depended on solid premises, he thought on the long boat ride back to the mainland.

Fact. Minny hadn’t had much luck in parents. Fact. That wasn’t her fault. Fact. Harry knew something about having a destiny. Fact. He wasn’t letting that happen to anyone he cared about, if he had a say.


	26. In Which Harry Faces His Problems

What would Dumbledore do? Dumbledore was a master of contradictions and the intricate madness of the wizarding world, of the creativity and tradition of it. He’d been a genius, capable of ruthless pragmatism and endless empathy, tricking his enemies into killing themselves by thinking that their own dearest treasure was the thing they had to destroy.

Dumbledore would lie, with a twinkling smile, by telling you part of the truth and offering you candy. He would be quiet as a raindrop and deadly as a tsunami, and Harry was aware he was being a little poetic here, but he forgave himself, because it was alright to be poetic sometimes.

“Lemon drop?” he asked Percy, who started out of his contemplation of the storm-tossed waves around their boat to accept the lemon candy.

“This is the kind Fred and George sell, isn’t it?” Percy asked.

“That’s right.”

Percy ate it, which was very trusting of him. Harry wasn’t sure how Percy was still so trusting after growing up with Fred and George as brothers.

“Thanks, Harry,” Percy said, smiling. “That helps. Azkaban’s a dour place, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Harry agreed, crunching lemon candy between his teeth and feeling his mood lift as he got to the liquid center.

“What were you doing there?”

Dumbledore would lie.

“Oh, trying to get the Death Eaters to see the error of their ways. Don’t you ever wish they would?”

“After what I saw working at the Ministry… no. I’d rather not see any of them again.”

Harry patted Percy’s arm, not certain how to take that.

“Fred tells me you’ll be going into business with them when you’ve finished your apprenticeship.”

“Maybe. I haven’t quite decided yet. There’s so much to do to clean up from the war, you know.”

“We’ve been having quite the time reversing the laws they’ve passed.”

“I bet.”

They talked about that, then, and the reasons for Harry’s trip seemed to pass unremarkable into the distance behind them, as the boat wove its way back to the rocky shore.

It was a different _style_ of lying from Malfoy and Snape and Draco. It was grand lies, the sort of lies that rewrote reality.

If Harry could rewrite reality....

If Harry was smiling a little oddly by the time he got back to Spinner’s End, the other occupants of the little house did not comment.

#

Dinner had been eaten, dishes officiously stolen by Kreacher, letters to Hermione and Ron written, and Minnie long tucked up in bed as good little girls with bedtimes were supposed to be. The house was quiet, sound baffled by books and Snape’s love of secrets and probably magic, as Harry gave up on sleep and padded downstairs to fix himself hot cocoa. The only light was the dim yellow glow from the street and the bright pinpoint of Harry’s wand, as he wandered into the front room to check on the snakes. Usually he’d have looked in on them earlier, but today hadn’t exactly been routine.

The cocoa, made with fresh milk and wizard’s chocolate, tasted like happy memories. His hands wrapped around the thick pottery mug were warm, even if his bare feet were cool on the smooth floorboards. He rather missed the Hogwarts stone floors. Snape’s rugs just didn’t have that comforting, familiar air.

The snake in the glass case was curled up in a pile of black scales, sleeping wrapped around a branch of driftwood. This one didn’t do much, just slept all the time. Harry had rarely had any sounds to record from it, though both he and Snape found it hard to fathom that the complexities of Parseltongue were truly conveyed with sound.

It was funny how having a dire responsibility, a baby wrapped up in weird plots (why couldn’t people just leave children _alone_ ), steadied him. Like ballast at the bottom of a sailing ship.

The snake lifted its head enough to look at him and said, “ _Turn out the light_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter, but hoping that posting will renew my spirit after this long hiatus.


	27. The Dumbledore Way

There was a fire burning in the hearth, Snape had a glass of pale wine and a book, and Kreacher was singing a cheerful song about witch burning to a hiccupping Minerva Delphi, who had been unhappy all day, which was _not Harry’s fault_. So he’d raised his voice at breakfast, he hadn’t actually yelled at the baby.

Harry stomped mentally on the writhing snake of his temper. Just because he’d been stuck inside for three days thanks to constant misting drizzle and could still talk to snakes was no reason to get _upset_. He threw himself into the other sitting room armchair, elbowing it into submission.

“Can I go see Ron and Hermione this evening?” he asked abruptly.

“No,” Snape said, not looking up.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, no.” Harry breathed in angrily through his nose. “I want you here,” Snape continued.

Harry let his breath out in a silent gasp.

I want you here.

Snape turned a page in his book. Kreacher continued into a rhyming couplet about how the witch burnt, burnt, burnt, because she hadn’t learnt, learnt, learnt. The fire crackled hungrily.

 _I want you here_.

Harry’s mouth was dry, and he couldn’t name the emotional mess that wanted to burst out of him. He held still, because otherwise he would crack like fragile glassware hit at the wrong angle. The idea, the sheer idea, of being _wanted_.

“Oh,” he said, and knew he’d left the pause too long, “Right, then.”

Right, then. He’d just stay here. He could reread Hermione’s letter on time travel, he didn’t really need to consult with her immediately about the talking to snakes.

 _I want you here,_ Snape’s voice whispered again in his mind, absent and utterly lacking in usual malice or sarcasm. I want you to pass the scones. I want you to mince the toadstools. I want you here.

Harry went and got his letters, Hermione’s fifteen page treatise on the nature of time magic and Ron’s three pages of Death Eater timelines and Ginny’s Quidditch tryouts (which, honestly, was the only fun one in the bunch), and settled back down to read, but his vision kept blurring.

In his honest, dark moments, he’d thought he’d tricked Snape into it, and some stubborn part of Snape just hadn’t wanted to back down from a challenge, even one from a student like Harry. Harry thought that probably had been true, at first. When had it changed? What had changed? Had something changed?

He spared a glance at Snape. Snape was looking better, for him. The dark circles under his eyes were mostly gone, and his temper had gone back to acerbic, not vicious. He didn’t have blank moments the way he had during the last year of the war and the immediate aftermath, as if he had forgotten his own existence (or Minny’s existence). His hair was still… well. If Snape ever got an Order of Merlin, which he rather deserved, Harry was setting another hair care potion on him.

What had Harry done to be wanted, he had to wonder. How could he do it again?

Their Saturday afternoon settled into amiable, if slightly stunned, quiet.

By their very nature, potions did not lend themselves to a weekday and weekend schedule. The dark of the moon and the full moon were busy days and nights for ingredient collection and preparation, but to keep a complex potion brewed over the course of a month or more on schedule, Saturday and Sunday ceased to matter, aside from the occasional weekend lunches with the Weasleys and evenings with Ron and Hermione, though his visits with Draco were currently somewhat curtailed by Snape’s ongoing cold war with Draco’s parents.

This perhaps explained why, on that rainy Saturday, Harry’s first thought upon opening the front door of Spinner’s End to Rita’s Skeeter’s professional smile was, _I’m never going to be able to justify going to Draco’s for lunch again_.

The list of people who knew Snape’s home address and knew Rita Skeeter and were currently angling for petty revenge was all of one name, if that name was a family name.

Harry’s second thought was, _this could be good practice_. He stepped outside, and closed the door behind him.

“Ms. Skeeter. We’re not doing interviews today.”

“Harry, Harry. You know you can’t just hide away from the world.”

Harry did know that.

“Let me walk you back to the apparition point. You can tell me why you’re here.”

She adjusted her glasses, but let Harry lead the way briskly back down the street.

“ _Normally_ , when I receive an interesting tip, I’d investigate before speaking to the subject, but I have a great deal of respect for you, Harry, so I thought I’d come speak with you directly. You know Professor Snape is involved in some murky business?”

“He usually is. Comes from being a double agent, but the war’s over now.”

“Is it? How optimistic of you.”

“I’ll keep yelling at people until it is, anyway. Look, is there some way to tell you things without them all ending up on the front page?”

“I think you’re talking about going off the record, Harry. I’d just love to get some background information from you for my books.”

“Hmm. How are those going?”

And between that and questions about how the elections were going, Harry managed to occupy the conversation until they reached the quiet stretch of grassy verge that muggles didn’t come by.

“This is about the baby, isn’t it,” Harry said.

“Not even you’re naïve enough to believe that story about the muggle woman, are you?”

Well, no, he wasn’t.

“Right,” Harry said. “Two things. First, Snape grew up with my mum.”

“Oh?”

“They were close.” Let’s not think about that, ugh. “Second, after the fight at the Department of Mysteries, Snape was missing for a while. We smashed up a whole room full of timeturners.”

Skeeter’s elegantly fashioned eyebrows went right up.

“If you put that together right out in the paper, I’ll report you,” Harry said bluntly. “But I figured you’d keep poking around otherwise, so I’d give you something other than Snape’s bizarre cover stories.”

Rita looked over her glasses at him, eyes narrow.

“Would you say you consider Severus Snape your father figure?”

Harry made a face.

“I’m his apprentice. That’s more than enough to deal with.”

“I’m not sure I believe you, but it makes a nice story, Harry.”

He grinned.

“Check around about Snape and my mum, and then tell me if you believe me.”

Create the reality you want to live in, one half-truth at a time. That was the Dumbledore way.


End file.
